A Life of Scholarship with Santayana Essays and Reflections (Value Inquiry Book / Philosophy in Spain, 362) 9004446648, 9789004446649

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A Life of Scholarship with Santayana

Value Inquiry Book Series Founding Editor Robert Ginsberg Managing Editor J.D. Mininger

volume 362

Philosophy in Spain Edited by Stella Villarmea (University of Alcalá de Henares)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​vibs and brill.com/psp

A Life of Scholarship with Santayana Essays and Reflections By

Herman J. Saatkamp Jr.

Edited by

Charles Padrón and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: © Angela Martinez, San Antonio, Texas, USA. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Saatkamp, Herman J., author. | Padrón, Charles, editor. | Skowroński, Krzysztof Piotr, editor. Title: A life of scholarship with Santayana : essays and reflections / by Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. ; edited by Charles Padrón and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, [2021] | Series: Value inquiry book series, 0929-8436 ; volume 362 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “An entire lifetime’s work by Herman J. Saatkamp is collected here in A Life of Scholarship with Santayana: Essays and Reflections. From the first essay, published in 1972, to the latest, in 2017, almost fifty years of scholarship is given a fresh embodiment of expression. Saatkamp is considered by many to be the world’s foremost authority on George Santayana’s life and thought. Not only does this volume bring into clear relief Saatkamp’s understanding of Santayana, the editing process, and genetic concerns and the future of philosophy, but it also betrays a lucid and humane understanding that aptly personifies a life spent in reflection, a discerning sense of appreciation, and an affirmation of life and learning”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020048754 (print) | LCCN 2020048755 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004446649 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004446656 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Santayana, George, 1863-1952. Classification: LCC B945.S24 S225 2021 (print) | LCC B945.S24 (ebook) | DDC 191–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048754 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048755 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill.” See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 0929-​8 436 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 4664-​9 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 4665-​6 (e-​book) Copyright 2021 by Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., Charles Padrón and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-​use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Foreword ix Editors’ Introduction xi Acknowledgments xii

part 1 Santayana and Philosophy Introduction to Part 1 3 1 Animal Faith 9 2 Some Remarks on Santayana’s Skepticism 16 3 Naturalism: Santayana and Strawson 24 1 Introduction 24 2  Scepticism and Animal Faith and Skepticism and Naturalism 24 3 Strawson’s General Approach 26 4 Inescapable Beliefs: Strawson and Santayana 26 5 Perception and Morality: Strawson and Santayana 40 6 Morality 43 7 Conclusion 47 4 Hermes the Interpreter 48 1 Santayana: Pilgrim or Traveler 48 2 The Development of Santayana’s Materialism 49 3 Santayana the Traveler 54 4 Conclusion 55 5 Fiction, Philosophy, and Autobiography: Santayana’s Persons and Places 56 1 Outline of the Life of Santayana 58 2 Fictionalized Accounts of Santayana’s Life 58 3 Autobiography and the Development of Santayana’s Philosophy 63 4 Epilogue 72

vi Contents 6 Santayana: The Popular Stranger 73 1 Film of Santayana from Al Feuer 74 2 The Stranger 75 3 Rebirth of Santayana Studies 76 4 Santayana: An International Figure 79 5 Naturalism 80 7 Festive Celebration of Life as One of Santayana’s Prime Values A Comment on Morris Grossman’s Presentation of Santayana’s Ultimate 83 1 Ultimate 83 2 Spinoza 84 3 Reason 86 4 Complete Naturalist and a Complete Humanist 86 8 “Introduction” to the Birth of Reason and Other Essays 87 1 Santayana’s Life 88 2  Fin de Siècle Hispanic-​American 93 3 The Pursuit of Wisdom: Festive Naturalism 98 4 The Birth of Reason 98 9 Santayana: Hispanic-​American, Cosmopolitan Philosopher, and World-​Citizen 100 1 Santayana’s Hispanic Individualism 105 2 Cosmopolitanism 110 10 Santayana: Culture and Creativity 126 1 Culture and the Individual 126 2 Naturalism and the Individual 127 3 What Is the Fate of Human Life? 129 4 How Is Such a View Relevant for Our Current Time? 133

part 2 Challenges in Editorship and Assorted Pieces Introduction to Part 2 139 11 Final Intentions, Social Context, and Santayana’s Autobiography 149 1 Final Intentions and Social Context 149

Contents



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2 Santayana’s Intentions and the Textual History of His Autobiography 155 3 Final Intentions and Santayana’s Autobiography 157

12 The Santayana Edition, Philosophical Texts and Principles: Corps-​Text vs. Copy-​Text 163 1 Corps-​Text vs. Copy-​Text 164 2 Copy-​Text (Core-​Text) 165 3 Corps-​Text 168 4 Conclusion 171 13 The Editor and Technology 173 1 Practices 173 2 Conceptual Changes 176 14 Private Rights vs. Public Needs 180 1 Scene One 180 2 Scene Two 180 3 Personal Rights and Scholarly Editing 180 4 Individual Rights 182 5 Public Needs 187 15 A Book Review of Henry Samuel Levinson’s Santayana: Pragmatism and the Spiritual Life 195 16 An Interview with Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. 203 17 The Delight of the Critical Edition of Reason in Society 217 1 Two Inquiries 217 2 Conclusion 227

part 3 Genetic Concerns and the Future of Philosophy Introduction to Part 3 231 18 Genetics and Pragmatism 237 1 The New Genetics 237 2 Pragmatism and Genetic Explanations 240

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3 Pragmatism and Parents 246 4 Pragmatism and Social Policy 249 5 The Limitations of Pragmatism 251

19 Genotypes, Phenotypes, and Complex Human Behavior Including Scholarly Editing 253 1 Editing: The Basis of Life 254 2 Simplicity: Genotype Causes Phenotype 256 3 Complexity: Social and Environmental Influences 257 4 Santayana’s Festive Naturalism 259 20 Teaching Ethical Issues in Genetics Assessment of the Development of Moral Reasoning Skill 262 1 Introduction 262 2 Methods 265 3 Results 267 4 Discussion 268 5 Conclusion 269 21 Introduction to the Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy 271 1 Rorty and Pragmatism 271 2 Rorty and Dewey 272 3 Rorty and the Future of Philosophy 274 4 Rorty’s Responses to His Critics 275 22 Is Animal Faith the End of Philosophy? 280 1 A Tribute to John Lachs 280 2 Structure of Scepticism and Animal Faith 280 3 Santayana’s Notion of Reason 282 4 Santayana’s Life of Reason 287 4 Complexity and the Role of Philosophy 289 23 We Walk Back in Time to Go Forward 291

Appendix 1 Multiculturalism as Plurality of Perfections Saatkamp’s Interpretation of Santayana 293 Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński Appendix 2 Santayana’s Delight in Living A Response to Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński 321 Index 333

Foreword So much for the idea that Santayana no longer engages the philosophical imagination, that the work of this erstwhile giant of the American literary scene can safely be forgotten. The oblivion was challenged by the tireless work of Herman Saatkamp in starting the critical edition of his writings and in making it a huge success. The sad fate of literary figures is difficult to escape: the distance between celebrated status and shoulder-​shrugging indifference is a case of untreated pneumonia. With Santayana, the ailment was cancer exacerbated by a change of taste on the part of philosophers. Systematic thought, literary style, and ontology went out of fashion, replaced by pseudoscientific precision. By 1960, just relatively a few years after his death, one had to explain who Santayana was and why his work was important. Saatkamp came across Santayana in graduate school and found him immediately engaging. It did not take long to persuade him that a critical edition was badly needed and that he had the talent and energy to undertake it. His account of the development of the edition provides ample indication of the importance of personal relations. It is not that charm and shared interest carry every day, but a humane and generous attitude is often the foundation of successful collaboration. Saatkamp’s description of his relation to Mrs. Cory, owner of many Santayana copyrights, is a case in point. Saatkamp highlights the influence of Santayana’s Spanish heritage and his family’s diplomatic background that has been often missed by American scholars. Both provide in-​depth understanding to Santayana’s concerns about American democracy and capitalism. Although known as a classical American philosopher, he is unique in not being an American. He was a Spanish citizen throughout his life, but he was more a world citizen and traveler, recognizing both the good and the bad in all forms of government, while emphasizing that the challenges for each individual are to live well and to celebrate life in one’s individual circumstances and environment and in the choices that are made. Saatkamp organized the first international conference held in Ávila, Spain, in 1992. Over 1200 participants from many continents attended. During the Franco regime (1936–​1975) Santayana was forbidden to be read in Spain, even while his novel, The Last Puritan, and the first book of his autobiography, Persons and Places, were among the best-​selling books in the US and England. This conference was seen by many as liberating the Spanish influence and impact of Santayana’s work. And we now have an international Spanish journal dedicated to Santayana, Limbo.

x Foreword His personal approach and academic standing led to his being the president of several international associations, including the Association for Documentary Editing. And in the second section of this volume, he transforms the mundane work of textual editing into something appealing and worth reading. One of the fascinating features of this book is the way it displays the parallel development of its author as a philosopher and administrator. Inevitably, the question arises how he could have combined intellectual flowering with administrative success. He burnt through faculty ranks to an endowed chair, two deanships, and eventually the presidency of a university. At the same time, he made himself a premier scholar of the works of Santayana, received and administered multiple large grants and founded and edited the journal Overheard in Seville, dedicated to the life and writings of Santayana. Most remarkably, perhaps, these are not stopping points but intersections on the road to self-​development. Saatkamp’s parallel interests include medical ethics and genetics, and he has held notable positions in medical schools. These are fascinating extensions of his work on Santayana’s notion of the human psyche. In the last section of this volume, he focuses on the future of philosophy and what can be learned from Santayana. The springboard for his comments are Santayana’s views of consciousness as an aftereffect of our animal psyche. These views are often reflected in the contemporary work of genetic and neuroscience research. Saatkamp advances philosophical approaches that engage the natural sciences while underlining the continued importance of philosophical discussion and analysis. The future of philosophy may take different directions to stay relevant to scientific discoveries, but it remains a singularly engaging field of inquiry and exploration. And Santayana’s influence will be a guide to new philosophical developments. This volume contains the first fruits in that area; his friends and followers have much to anticipate. John Lachs

Editors’ Introduction The present collected volume of essays (1972–​2018) by Herman Saatkamp recounts his evolution as a scholar of Santayana’s philosophy and his formation as a scholar and theoretician of the editorial process. There are also essays that address genetic themes and issues. The essays cover a time span of some fifty years. Over the period of those years Saatkamp shuttled the course from graduate student to professor to dean to himself being the president of a university. Notwithstanding this academic journey, throughout the entirety of these years he cultivated his primary interests (philosophy and scholarship) continuously. Many of these pieces have been previously published in various journals, and detailed information (where applicable) has been provided in the Acknowledgements. Editorial changes and alterations have been made in concert with the author in order to improve coherence and readability, without however, disrupting the essential ideas expressed or the original language employed.

Acknowledgments The majority of the pieces collected in this book have been previously published. Numbers 3, 6, and 12, are here published for the first time, as is Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński’s “Multiculturalism as a Plurality of Perfections.” The editors would like to thank the following journals, presses, and individuals for permission in allowing us to republish the original pieces listed below. 1. John Wiley and Sons for “Animal Faith,” originally published in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 2 (Summer, 1972), 167–​71. 2. American Philosophical Quarterly for “Some Remarks on Santayana’s Skepticism” (1980), 151–​58. 3. Overheard in Seville for “Hermes the Interpreter,” (vol. 3, 1985); “Is Animal Faith the End of Philosophy,” (vol. 35, 2017) and “Santayana: Culture and Creativity,” (vol. 36, 2018). 4. Cengage for “Fiction, Philosophy, and Autobiography:  Santayana’s Persons and Places,” originally published in Critical Essays on George Santayana (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1991). 5. University of Toronto Press for “Festive Celebration of Life as One of Santayana’s Prime Values: A Comment on Morris Grossman’s Presentation of Santayana’s Ultimate,” originally published in American Philosophers Idea of Ultimate Reality and Meaning (uram Monograph) in 1994. 6. Columbia University Press for the “Introduction,” from The Birth of Reason and other essays, by George Santayana, edited Daniel Cory. Copyright@ 1995 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of Columbia University Press. 7. The journal Limbo and José Beltrán Llavador for “The Delight of the Critical Edition of Reason in Society,” (no. 37, 2017), 35–​52; and “George Santayana:  World Citizen” originally published in Santayana:  un pensador Universal, edited by José Beltrán Llavador, Manuel Garrido, and Sergio Sevilla (Valencia:  Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-​amercains, 2011), 21–​35. Portions of this essay (“George Santayana:  World Citizen”), have been incorporated into essay 9 (“Santayana: Hispanic-​American, Cosmopolitan Philosopher, and World Citizen”) in this volume. 8. For “Book Review of Henry Samuel Levinson’s Santayana:  Pragmatism and the Spiritual Life” (1993), and portions of “Santayana: Hispanic Cosmopolitan Philosopher,” Indiana University Press journals. Transactions of the Charles S.  Peirce Society, vol. 29, no.  1 (1993), 91–​101; and vol. 34, no. 1(1998), 51–​68.

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Acknowledgments

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Texas A & M University Press for “Final Intentions, Social Context, and Santayana’s Autobiography,” originally published in Frontiers in American Philosophy, vol. ii, edited by Robert Burch and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. (College Station, tx: Texas A & M University Press, 1996), 63–​75. 10. Documentary Editing for “Genotypes, Phenotypes, and Complex Human Behavior Including Scholarly Editing,” (March 8, 1988), 1–​5; “The Editor and Technology,” (March 1990), 9–​12; and “Private Rights and Public Needs,” (December 1991), 77–​84. 11. Kinesis for “Interview with Herman J. Saatkamp Jr.,” (Summer, 1994), 26–​39. 12. Glenn McGee for “Genetics and Pragmatism,” originally published in Pragmatic Bioethics, edited by Glenn McGee (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1993), 152–​67. 13. Vanderbilt University Press for “ ‘Introduction’ to Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to His Critics,” (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995), 9–​16. 14. Annals of Behavioral Science and Medical Education for “Teaching Ethical Issues in Genetics: Assessment of the Development of Moral Reasoning Skill,” (2006, vol. 12, no. 1), 21–​25. 15. The Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center at Stockton University, Galloway, New Jersey, for “We Walk Back in Time to Go Forward” originally published in March 2013.

pa rt 1 Santayana and Philosophy

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Introduction to Part 1 Looking back over fifty years of one’s work is rewarding and challenging. One is tempted to suggest a coherent whole with each piece fitting into one’s philosophical development in a well-​organized, carefully constructed, development of thought. However, that rational and logical progression of thought was not apparent at any stage of my work and, perhaps, can only be assessed when the last of my work is completed, and then only by someone else. Even so, it is rejuvenating to look back over a half-​century of work and to see its development and consistency, as well as the many missing pieces and so much left to be done. The first article, “Animal Faith,” was written in 1968 during my first year as a graduate student in philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I wrote it for Dr. John Lachs who led a seminar on naturalism and Santayana, and he indicated my paper could be the basis for a doctoral dissertation. I probably smiled at his suggestion, and I  never imagined this would be the beginning of a life-​long effort to understand and preserve Santayana’s work. I revised the paper and submitted it for its eventual publication in 1972, the same year I completed my dissertation on animal faith. The journey of scholarship is rarely a straight line and unexpected events may dramatically alter the direction of one’s life. Mine was changed by two remarkable individuals and my interest in Caravaggio’s paintings, and there is a discussion of this in my introduction to Part 2. This led to The mit Press publishing the full critical edition and my holding an endowed chair and completing my career in a surprising number of unlikely academic positions that included being a professor of philosophy, a professor of medical genetics and also of pediatrics in medical centers, as well as being a department chair, holding two dean’s positions, and the president of a state university. Santayana would have smiled at all these positions and wondered what could possibly lead a Santayana scholar to such endeavors. He once said, “There are three traps that strangle philosophy: the church, the marriage bed, and the professor’s chair.”1 Santayana escaped all three, and although I admired and respected Santayana’s views, I accepted two of the three willingly but early in my career abandoned standardized religion. His smile continues to follow me with an ironic warmth.

1 John Lachs, ed., Animal Faith and Spiritual Life: Previously Unpublished and Uncollected Writings by George Santayana with Critical Essays on His Thought (New York: Meredith, 1967), 168.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_002

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My understanding of Santayana had two important turns of thought. First, I began to understand that Santayana carefully chose his terminology and his sometimes humorous approach to philosophical discussion, and second, that his approach was revolutionary and turned philosophy on its head. 1

Santayana’s Terminology and Philosophical Approach

In “Animal Faith” (1972) I exhibit the perspective of a graduate student, focusing on careful terminology and attention to the details of argument. This was a natural perspective for one just beginning the study of philosophy in the late 1960s, but it misses much of the significance of Santayana’s work. Principally, it misses the significance of Santayana’s deliberate choice of language and approach to philosophy that set him apart from the other classical American philosophers of his day that included James, Royce, Dewey, Peirce, and others. Of course, there is much that sets Santayana apart from his contemporaries. His heritage gave him a perspective that eluded his American colleagues, and his ironic humor when recognized causes one to smile or even laugh out loud. John McCormick writes: Insofar as a biographer can determine, he was a happy man, and his happiness was contagious. His scepticism nevertheless made him seem chilling to the fervent, and his range of mind and of subject caused him to seem to others superficial, elusive, or merely iconoclastic. He was not elusive, but fastidious, one whose distinctions were subtle but wonderfully available, and not only to specialists.2 Much of Santayana’s humor was ironic and reflective of his Spanish heritage. As I write in “Santayana: Hispanic-​American, Cosmopolitan Philosopher and World Citizen”: Irony is a strong element in Spanish humor, and it is central to understanding Santayana. Clearly there is much irony in his life: he is one of the founders of American philosophy but never an American; he promotes high regard for religion but is an atheist; he notes that aesthetics and values are useless but sees that as enhancing their importance; he is known for his systematic approach to philosophy but claims there is 2 John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), xiv.

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no metaphysics in his work; he is a voice for solitude and individual values but is a naturalist expounding the commonality of our material and physiological bases; he is a learned scholar and professor who sees scholarship and academia as centers for economic prosperity and domination rather than education.3 His heritage is a springboard for his choosing the classical terms of Plato and Aristotle rather than the contemporary philosophical language of his time. During his lifetime, he was the only philosopher writing about realms of essence, spirit, matter, and truth. He views these terms as enriched by their heritage and not as transitory and superficial as the current philosophical language. Hence, my earlier criticisms of his use of language and lack of clarity in argument miss the exact point he was making. Philosophy is meaningful and significant but only in its historical context. Philosophy is not a natural science; it does not reveal hidden worlds or provide evidence for human achievement or activities, but rather it reflects one’s time and heritage. Philosophy bears more resemblance to poetry and music than to the natural sciences, and the rich heritage of philosophical discussions enlarge its meaning and significance. In my “Introduction to The Birth of Reason & Other Essays” (1995) I write: “With festive Spanish irony he refuses to yield to fashion and the march of progress. He wrestles with philosophical and literary questions through classical terms and phrases, providing his own elegance of style and withdrawing from absolute standards imposed on him or by him.”4 2

Revolutionary Approach to Philosophy

Santayana’s heritage and background play a distinct role in his philosophical perspective and contribute to his revolutionary approach to philosophical inquiry. He turns philosophy upside-​down in accounting for human action, and it is this aspect of his philosophy that was often missed by his contemporaries. When it was not missed, it troubled them greatly. If American pragmatism is based on understanding the world and working for a better society through pragmatic results and rational argument, Santayana sees such an approach as wrongheaded. It does not recognize the role of our psyche (our individual physiological base with its heritable traits) and the influence of our

3 This essay is in the current volume. 4 This essay is included in the present volume.

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environment and culture. Santayana’s background enabled him to see how his contemporary American colleagues were heavily influenced by the American way of life and the youthful optimism in American democracy and industrialism. For Santayana, these American perspectives are bound by the parentheses of their environment. Principally the twin fears of private anarchy and public uniformity are the basis for Santayana’s criticisms of democracy, which he saw as potentially crushing individuality because of the insistence on conformity. Dewey, Kallen, Lamont, and others found Santayana’s inattentiveness to social inequality unacceptable. And Santayana found his American critics unable to understand their situatedness in the American enterprise. For Santayana the American government and its supporting industrialism are only phases within an historic time frame, and the material rush of history will move to other forms of organization in the future. Furthermore, to assume that reason and pragmatism were the guiding forces of human activity only ignores our animal base and the developing scientific explanations of animal activity. For Santayana, reason and consciousness are not the causes of action. This view is almost singular and startling for his time. Consciousness is an aftereffect of material causes radiating from our physical interaction with our natural environment. Hence, if one is to explain the actions of animals, including human animals, it will not be through conscious reasoning but by the same natural causes as that of any animal. For many of Santayana’s contemporaries this approach would seem to remove the importance of consciousness and reason, but not for Santayana. Rather it elevated their significance. At its best consciousness or spirit (as he calls consciousness) is celebratory and should be pursued as central to the art of living well. Consciousness is periodic and rarely continuous, but it is celebratory and more like the music produced by a symphony orchestra, perhaps delightful at its best while ephemeral and not lasting. Still, consciousness or spirit is like art, poetry, and music and is central to human expression and to living well. Santayana’s revolutionary view of reason and consciousness raises many significant questions about the role of government, how individuals may change political structures, what room is left for creativity, and how does one live well in one’s current circumstances? These questions and others have been discussed by many modern-​day philosophers including Strawson, Wittgenstein, Nagel, Appiah and others. Current neurophysiological research is investigating consciousness and its interplay with our neurophysiology and the environment, including decision making and judgments. For those who have read Santayana, these are engaging times and seem a part of the forecast of Santayana’s philosophical work. But Santayana did not turn to the physical sciences in his own analysis of human

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endeavor. His principal aim was to describe how individuals live well. For many scholars, Santayana’s approach is too individualistic. Although a naturalist who expounds on the common animal nature of all humans, he also advises each individual to seek out the best life possible given their heritable traits and their environment. He often writes that governments are like the weather. One can make some reliable predictions about the weather, and one should find the climate that best suits one’s own preferences. The same is true of governments that shift in one direction or another depending on the material circumstances of the times. Hence, one should find the best governmental environment for one’s individualistic needs. Santayana loved travel, even being a stranger in other cultures, and in many ways became a world citizen and cosmopolitan, as I explore in “Santayana: Hispanic-​American, Cosmopolitan Philosopher, and World Citizen.”5 Social injustice is inherent in all governments, and individual efforts rarely make a lasting difference in governmental structures, although they may try by joining forces with others and depending on the environmental circumstances they may succeed. But there is no inevitable progress in any governmental form just as there is no inevitable progress for individual development. All depends on the material conditions of one’s environment and of one’s own nature. What about freedom and creativity? Are they no longer a part of human nature? They are. But any explanation must come from the physical structures of our lives and are to be celebrated through our spirit or consciousness. Hence, philosophical inquiry not only opens the door to a careful analysis of consciousness and reason, but also provides remarkable opportunities for philosophy and the natural sciences to coordinate in understanding human nature and activities. Some of these approaches are suggested in “Santayana: Culture and Creativity” (2018).6 How does one live well? That is Santayana’s principal question and contribution to human thought. For him there were two essential ingredients: (1) accepting one’s natural base for life and morality and (2) being humane enough to accept the many divergent ways in which life can be lived with excellence. I end with a quote from Santayana: Morality is something natural. It arises and varies, not only psychologically but prescriptively and justly, with the nature of the creature whose morality it is. Morality is something relative, not that its precepts in any

5 This essay included in this volume. 6 This essay is included in this volume.

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case are optional or arbitrary; for each man they are defined by his innate character and possible forms of happiness and action. His momentary passions or judgments are partial expressions of his nature but not adequate or infallible; and ignorance of the circumstances may mislead in practice, as ignorance of self may mislead in desire. But this fixed good is relative to each species and each individual; so that in considering the moral ideal of any philosopher, two questions arise. First, does he, like Spinoza, understand the natural basis of morality, or is he confused and superstitious on the subject? Second, how humane and representative is his sense for the good, and how far, by his disposition or sympathetic intelligence, does he appreciate all the types of excellence toward which life may be directed?7 7 George Santayana, Persons and Places:  Fragments of Autobiography (Cambridge:  The mit Press, 1986), 234–​35.

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Animal Faith Much of what has been written about Santayana’s philosophy is critical of it, and what little has been written about Santayana’s notion of animal faith is no exception. By introducing the concept of animal faith Santayana has been accused of committing the existential fallacy; “from a non-​existential premise Santayana has derived an existential conclusion.”1 And even Bertrand Russell finds animal faith inadequate since according to Russell it accepts all beliefs and what is needed is not the acceptance or rejection of all beliefs but an analysis which accounts for one’s reasonably accepting some beliefs while rejecting others.2 In this paper I hope to give a sympathetic rendering of Santayana’s concept of animal faith and in so doing to show that any interpretation which portrays Santayana as attempting to justify a move from essence to existence is completely misleading and that Russell’s criticism, as Santayana says,3 does not recognize the fundamental nature of animal faith. Primarily I will argue that many, if not most, of the difficulties with Santayana’s notion of animal faith are due to his careless terminology and his lack of concern for detail.

1

In Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana presents the notion of animal faith after he has reduced any attempt to justify knowledge to the solipsism of the present moment. The solipsism of the present moment is simply the pure awareness of a datum (essence) given in a single instance of intuition, and, according to Santayana, it is the inevitable outcome of attempting to base knowledge on what is demonstrably certain or self-​evidently true. It is a solipsism because there is no rational justification for believing in anything not given in the present moment of intuition. Even though in Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana presents the notion of animal faith in relation to his discussions of essence and intuition, 1 Sidney Gross, “The Scepticism of George Santayana,” Tulane Studies in Philosophy: Epistemology II, xviii (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), 57. 2 Bertrand Russell, “The Philosophy of George Santayana,” in The Philosophy of George Santayana, Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1940), 460–​61. 3 George Santayana, “Apologia Pro Mente Sua,” ibid., 586.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_003

10 Chapter 1 one should not suppose that the concept of animal faith is dependent upon the doctrines of essence and intuition.4 Such a supposition is involved in the mistaken criticism that Santayana has committed the existential fallacy. The author of this criticism assumes that Santayana is building an epistemology in which animal faith justifies the move from essence to existence. However, a careful reading of the Santayana corpus discloses that he is doing no such thing. Rather, Santayana sees the task of his realistic philosophy as twofold: (1) to discern the implicit belief or faith assumed in all action and (2) then to analyze the ontologically distinguishable features of experience structured by such a faith.5 The analysis of essence and intuition are a part of the second task of Santayana’s philosophy, and the task of explicating the belief assumed in all action may be done without any mention of essence or intuition since it is concerned with the ontologically distinguishable elements of consciousness. It is important to recognize that Santayana uses “belief,” “faith,” “commitment,” “knowledge” in a way that the extension of their meaning is not restricted to animals with the ability to think in the form of propositions. He uses these terms in the familiar way in which we speak of an animal knowing his way home or believing he can find what he is looking for. In discerning the beliefs of faith implicit in all action, one should not expect Santayana to demonstrate that his realism is absolutely or demonstrably right. He attempts to show that there is a “natural opinion” implicated in all action. This natural opinion or belief is what he calls animal faith. Animal faith denotes the instinctive commitment to or the belief in the constancy and plasticity of the environment which is assumed in spatio-​temporal action.6 The animal engaged in action instinctively or naturally believes, or acts as if he believes, in the existence of a knowable external world.7 “Animals, then, in pursuing, touching or recoiling from surrounding things, evidently know them.”8 The living animal tacitly assumes a field of action in which he can act on the basis of his knowledge of the external world. This field of action is an environment external to the acting animal is a part. In this sense Santayana says that knowledge of this environment or world is transitive “since the things known exist side by side with the 4 See “Apologia Pro Mente Sua,” 580, and George Santayana, Realms of Being (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), 831. 5 See George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (New York: Dover, 1955), v–​x, and “General Review,” in Realms of Being, 826–​54. 6 John Lachs, “The Proofs of Realism,” Animal Faith and Spiritual Life, ed. John Lachs (New York: Appleton-​Century-​Crofts, 1967), 195. 7 For more on the properties of this external world see George Santayana, Realms of Being, 202–​17. 8 George Santayana, “Three Proofs of Realism,” 179.

Animal Faith

11

animal they stimulate, and prior to the reaction and perception which they occasion.”9 It is transitive because the objects of such knowledge exist independently of the animal in the field of action, otherwise acting on them would be impossible. It is interesting that at this point in the Santayanan philosophy the nature of the field of action (whether physical or not) is unimportant. That the animal believes, or assumes in action, that there is an external world or environment, or a field of action to act upon and within is the fundamental tacit commitment of all animals which Santayana calls animal faith. In order to discern such a commitment tacitly functioning in action one does not as yet have to designate the precise nature of the field of action other than that it permits transitive knowledge that is relevant to action. Santayana writes of animal faith as an “expectation,” or “openmouthedness,” a “primitive credulity,”10 which is implicit in all action and prior to all experience, and one may add, it is the most general structure of experience of every acting being. The notion of animal faith and its fundamental relation to all experience may be clarified by interpreting animal faith as a set which structures all experiences of an animal. This interpretation of animal faith as a set or disposition perhaps will be clearer if a comparison is made with the notion of perceptual sets found in perceptual psychology. The familiar example of the ambiguous picture of the duck/​rabbit will help illustrate this concept. In this example one is presented with a picture which may be seen as a duck or as a rabbit; the assignment of significance to the picture as a duck or a rabbit does not depend upon the picture but upon the so-​called perceptual set which enables one to see the “neutral” object as a duck or rabbit. In this example the “seeing as” is dependent upon the perceptual set which affects the way the sensory data are given meaning and structures the relations which warrant belief, e.g., it determines whether a particular datum is perceived as the ears of the rabbit or the bill of a duck. The perceptual set structures and defines what one’s experience is and thereby makes possible the evidence which warrants the belief that the picture is one of a rabbit or one of a duck. To this extent the concepts of perceptual set and animal faith have a similar function in regard to significance assignment. The intuited essence is structured as indicative of a material world which can be acted upon by the animal even though the object of intuition bears no such significance in itself. One might describe animal faith as the set implicit in all action which structures experience in such a way that intuited essences are taken as indicative of an external world and

9 Ibid. 10 George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 107.

12 Chapter 1 thereby makes possible the evidence which warrants commitments necessary for action. Even though the notions of animal faith and of perceptual sets have common features related to significance assignment, there is a striking difference in the level of generality. One may designate specific perceptual sets associated with particular sensory data (e.g., the ambiguous pictures of perceptual psychology), and the distinguishing of these sets may be the object of study for a psychology which attempts to deal with the relation between significance assignment and reinforcements in environment relevant to such sets. But Santayana is not concerned with such an activity. Rather he is attempting to disclose the level of significant assignment which is found in all action. He is not seeking a particular set common to one or more experiences but that set which is implicit in all action, and it is just such a set which he calls animal faith. This is the fundamental nature of animal faith which Russell did not recognize in his criticism of animal faith as being inadequate. Santayana is not attempting to give an explication of the criteria for determining which beliefs are reliable and which are not, rather animal faith denotes the belief implicit in all action which structures all experience.

2

That a belief in an external world is assumed in all action seems unquestionable to Santayana and to this writer. However, Santayana’s notion of animal faith must also be seen in relation to the ontologically distinguishable features of experience, and a number of questionable aspects of Santayana’s philosophy arise in developing the concept of animal faith in relation to these features. I will examine some of these difficulties by first discussing the concept of animal faith in relation to Santayana’s materialism and then by examining the manner in which Santayana develops the notion of animal faith in relation to the elements of consciousness. The first principle of Santayana’s materialism is that “matter is the only substance, power, or agency in the universe.”11 A full explication of this principle is beyond the scope of this paper, but for our purposes it is enough to note that Santayana limits any casual force to the realm of matter. He recognizes other ontological realms (essence, spirit, truth) but only the material realm has causal powers. Santayana’s materialism is consistent with his epiphenomenalism 11

George Santayana, “Apologia Pro Mente Sua,” 509.

Animal Faith

13

in that he maintains any causal force involved in experience must be physical and the mind, or flow of consciousness, is generated by physical forces, but in itself the mind is impotent. What occurs on the level of consciousness is viewed as a “reflection” or a “transcript” of what occurs on the physiological level. In relation to animal faith, experience must ultimately refer to the physiological structure of the animal which generates consciousness. On the physiological level animal faith is the instinctive disposition or set within the physiology of the animal which may be described as a physical action tendency to generate consciousness in such a fashion that consciousness is directed upon an external world.12 On the level of consciousness this physical action tendency is reflected in the experience of intent which for Santayana is the external reference or “pointing” to the not-​given, that is, consciousness is directed toward an external world rather than toward essences, the ultimate data of consciousness, which in themselves have no relation whatsoever with an external world. As such Santayana uses the term “animal faith” in an amphibious manner such that at times animal faith refers to causal processes within the psyche of the animal and at other times animal faith refers to the intent experienced on the level of consciousness.13 If the reader is not aware of this amphibious usage, then it will be quite confusing to read Santayana’s development of animal faith in relation to his materialism because Santayana is normally not careful to distinguish between these two usages. This development of the notion of animal faith suffers from the vagueness of terms such as “transcript,” “reflection,” and even “intent,” and from a lack of a rigorous step by step argument to support Santayana’s epiphenomenalism, and it seems clear to me that if one recognizes the amphibious use of “animal faith,” then the concept of animal faith is more readily understood in relation to Santayana’s materialistic outlook regardless of other criticisms which may be brought to bear directly on that outlook itself. Santayana’s careless terminology and lack of concern for detail raises its head in a more dangerous way when he discusses the relation between the instinctive belief in an external world (animal faith) and the elements of consciousness. He writes of essences being “taken” as indicative of an external world,14 and of “material categories,”15 and of essences as “symbols,”16 of an 12 13

George Santayana, “Three Proofs of Realism,” 194. For example see George Santayana, “Animal Faith:  Practical and Visionary,” in Animal Faith and Spiritual Life, 237–​38, and Chapter XII of Scepticism and Animal Faith, 109–​15. 14 George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 180. 15 Ibid., 114. 16 Ibid., 164–​81.

14 Chapter 1 external world. Each of these ways of speaking seems to indicate that the mind is an active agent which “takes” essences as indicative, or structures them according to “material categories,” or interprets the essences as symbols of an external world. But clearly Santayana’s epiphenomenalism precludes such an interpretation of the role of mind in experience. Furthermore, Santayana’s terminology not only makes it more difficult to understand his position, but it also lends support to much misunderstanding of Santayana’s outlook and a seeming credibility to criticisms such as that Santayana has committed the existential fallacy. The language Santayana uses makes it appear that he is attempting to justify the move from essence to existence by making the mind an active agent in receiving data through material categories as indicative of an external world. It is as if he were attempting to develop an epistemology from an “intuition-​out” perspective and is asking how does one explain going beyond the mere intuition of essence discerned in the solipsism of the present moment. But Santayana did not view this as the task of his philosophy; “we are not called upon to issue from pure intuition into belief, but at most to discern in our actual beliefs an element of pure intuition.”17 Thus, in attempting to relate animal faith to intuition and essence Santayana’s terminology gives the appearance of doing exactly what he considers it impossible to do, i.e., to give a rational justification for belief in an external world. Strictly speaking it is improper to speak of essences being taken as indicative of an external world. Rather it would be more appropriate to say that in the generation of consciousness from physiological processes the intuition of the essences which is constituent of that consciousness is generated as directed upon the external world. Material categories cannot be understood as categories of the mind but perhaps they may be interpreted as a literary characterization of physiological action tendencies which structure one’s experience in such a way that the consciousness generated “points” beyond pure consciousness to a world external to the animal. The notion of essences as symbols should not stand without qualification because it too implies that there is a symbol interpreter (an active mind) on the level of consciousness. It would be better to speak of the generation of symbols in consciousness with the process of symbolization and of interpretation occurring on the physical level and being reflected on the level of consciousness. Certainly Santayana has left many questions unanswered when he develops the concept of symbolic knowledge, but it is not my purpose to answer these questions. It is simply enough to point out that some of the difficulty 17

George Santayana, “Apologia Pro Mente Sua,” 580.

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15

with understanding Santayana’s notion of animal faith springs not only from careless terminology but from his lack of concern for detail. When one begins to examine the consequences of the notion of animal faith for Santayana’s philosophy, he is rather quickly met with difficulties caused in large part at least by Santayana’s lack of concern for detailed argument and analysis (such as the precise meaning of “intent,” “transcript,” “reflection,” “symbolic knowledge”). These difficulties are associated with the second task of Santayana’s realistic philosophy, that is, to analyze the ontologically distinguishable features of experience structured by animal faith. As such they do not undermine the notion of animal faith which is independent of Santayana’s ontological analysis since it is the result of an analysis of the belief or faith assumed in all action and not of an analysis of the ontology of action. Thus, in spite of these inadequacies in the development of Santayana’s philosophy, the concept of animal faith stands on its own as denoting the belief implicit in all action that there is an external world or field of action in which transitive knowledge relevant to action is possible. In summary, one may say that many of the difficulties associated with the concept of animal faith are the result of Santayana’s careless terminology and lack of concern for detail when he begins to explore the relation between animal faith and the ontologically distinguishable features of experience. Perhaps one may explain these difficulties by noting that Santayana is a synthetic thinker and it is rare indeed to find one man who combines the qualities of rigorous analysis with a synoptic vision. However, this explains but it does not excuse. Careless terminology and lack of concern for detail have turned more than one serious reader away from Santayana, and they have led many to consider Santayana more of a poet than he considered himself to be.

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Some Remarks on Santayana’s Skepticism In Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana develops a skepticism that is radical and complete. The literary form of Santayana’s skepticism is Cartesian in style in that he begins by showing that our ordinary beliefs are subject to criticism and doubt and then through a form of regress argument ends his skepticism on a note of certainty. This literary parallel with Descartes adds a strikingly dramatic quality to Santayana’s clearly anti-​Cartesian conclusion concerning the significance of the certainty obtained at the terminus of his skeptical regress. This certainty according to Santayana logically cannot be the foundation for any set of beliefs or knowledge claims. In his own characteristic fashion Santayana maintains both that here is something which may be characterized as indubitable and that such indubitability is a dead end. It is a dead end because it does not provide the basis or the standards for consciously reconstructing our knowledge from our foundations. With one hand Santayana gives to the strong foundationalist1 (like Descartes) the concept of indubitability and infallibility that is required for their approach while with the other hand he takes away all the significance of such “self-​warrant” that is essential to the foundationalist position. This not only is a neat trick but is quite relevant to contemporary analysis of foundationalist claims.2 In order to present Santayana’s position it is first necessary to give a brief (very brief) account of the type of foundationalism he is arguing against. In Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana is arguing against the strong foundationalism exemplified in Descartes, but this does not mean that this form of foundationalism is the only one that Santayana’s arguments can be marshalled against.3 In its barest outlines one may say that strong foundationalism consists in at least five theses: 1 See William P. Alston, “Varieties of Privileged Access,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 8, no. 3 (July, 1971), 223–​24 for a careful explication of the distinction between infallibility, indubitability, self-​warrant, and other forms of favorable epistemic positions. 2 Though I shall not be able to show it within this short paper I believe that Santayana’s arguments are significantly related to contemporary formulations and criticisms of foundationalism. In particular some of the work of R.M. Chisholm as found, for example, in Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-​Hall, 1964) and in Bruce Aune’s criticism of foundationalism as found in Knowledge, Mind, and Nature (New York: Random House, 1967) and in some of the latest articles and papers by William P. Alston in which he explicates and develops a form of “weak foundationalism.” 3 In Section iva, I  try to show how Santayana’s argument applies to another form of foundationalism.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_004

Some Remarks on Santayana’s Skepticism

1.

17

Every bit of knowledge is either mediate or immediate, and all mediate knowledge stands at the end of a chain of justification that rests upon immediate knowledge. 2. Immediate knowledge is indubitable and infallible, i.e., it is not subject to doubt or error in any conceivable sense. 3. By regress arguments one can in fact discover such immediate knowledge. 4. Immediate knowledge is epistemic. That is, if a person has immediate knowledge of p, then he not only knows p, but he knows (immediately) that he knows p. 5. Once this immediate knowledge is discovered, one can begin to reconstruct one’s knowledge from its foundations. The benefits of completing a strong foundationalist program are numerous, but only three will be mentioned. First, the establishment of a strong foundationalist position would answer skepticism in the clearest, surest fashion. Secondly, one would not only have shown that there is knowledge, but one would also have shown the exact nature of and justification for knowledge. Thirdly, one would be able to carry out (at least, theoretically) a thorough program of reconstructing our knowledge from the foundations with the use of suitable inference rules. A. Santayana’s disagreement with the strong foundationalist primarily stems from his denial that infallible and indubitable epistemic knowledge is at a terminus of a thoroughgoing skeptical regress. Santayana does maintain that one can discover a form of infallibility and indubitability at the end of a skeptical regress, but he denies that what is discovered is epistemic and therefore maintains it cannot provide the foundations for any reconstruction of knowledge on rational grounds. He argues that the ultimate terminus of a skeptical regress is a solipsism of the present moment. In maintaining this, Santayana’s skepticism, like most traditional skepticisms, is parasitic. He assumes the rationalistic criterion of the strong foundationalist and seeks to find self-​evident knowledge. In this pursuit he discards all beliefs and knowledge claims that are not demonstrably certain or self-​evidently true, and he pushes skepticism to an end quite different from that maintained by the strong foundationalist. An explication of the exact steps of Santayana’s skeptical regress would require far too much space for a short paper. However, it is the last step in this regress that is most significant and should receive close attention. The earlier are reminiscent of traditional positions noting that our cherished beliefs about the physical world, history, self-​consciousness, and time are all subject to doubt. In the final stages of his regress Santayana raises a question of transcendental criticism in asking whether or not there is any belief about experience

18 Chapter 2 alone that is absolutely certain, i.e., a belief not subject to any conceivable doubt or error. In the tradition of his time he examines the “given” in experience and maintains that when one attends only to the given, he attends to that which lies beyond doubt and belief, and therein lies the certainty found by a skeptical regress. Admittedly, this is a peculiar kind of certainty since it is non-​propositional and non-​judgmental, but more will be said of this later. For now it is important to understand the central thesis of Santayana’s approach because in Scepticism and Animal Faith this thesis becomes fused with other tenets of Santayana’s philosophy (such as essence), but the central thesis can stand quite independent of many of these other tenets and of the difficulties associated with them. Briefly, this thesis is simply that there is something given in any instance of consciousness that is independent of our being conscious of it or believing in it; and if we can theoretically or in practice suspend our beliefs about the given, then we can understand that the reality of the given is simply what it is apart from our beliefs or doubts about it. The given is what it is and that is certain, but it is a certainty that is otiose as far as establishing any foundations for knowledge because it is a certainty based on the suspension of belief and not the establishment of it. This certainty is found only in the vacant awareness of a momentary given which characterizes the solipsism of the present moment. Another way of making the same point is to say that if one is seeking that which cannot be doubted or be in error, then according to Santayana one is driven to the vacant awareness of what is given. The vacancy of the awareness guarantees there can be no doubt, i.e., there is no foundational belief or knowledge that can be discerned in the certitude of the solipsism of the present moment because there is no belief whatsoever in such a solipsism. As Santayana writes, his solipsism of the present moment “was not an invitation to the public to become solipsists or a pretence that I had become one, but a demonstration that demonstration in matters of belief is impossible, that the terms of experience are unsubstantial, and that life would be a vain dream, if faith did not interpret it.”4 B. Of course, Santayana describes the given as an essence. An essence is said to be eternal in that its being is not dependent on any time or location, and it is a universal and not a particular as in sense-​data theories. Santayana was well aware of many of the difficulties associated with describing the given as an essence.

4 George Santayana, “Apologia Pro Mente Sua,” in The Philosophy of George Santayana, ed. Paul A. Schlipp (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1951), 517.

Some Remarks on Santayana’s Skepticism

19

These words [“essence” and “realms of essence”] and my whole presentation of this subject, were perhaps unfortunate. I  have advanced an emancipating doctrine in traditional terms; the terms excite immediate scorn in modern radical quarters, while the emancipating doctrine horrifies those conservatives to whom the terms might not give offense. I am sorry: but this accident after all is of little consequence, especially as the same doctrine—​loaded, no doubt, with other accidental lumber—​is being propagated by various influential writers in uglier and more timely terms. The point is to reduce the evident to the actually evident, and to relegate all the rest to hypothesis, presumption, and animal faith.5 In more contemporary terms (but uglier and far less dramatic) Santayana’s contention is that if we reduce our knowledge to the actually evident, we may discern an awareness that is infallible and indubitable; but this infallibility and indubitability characterize such a restricted state of consciousness that it cannot provide the basis for the reconstruction of knowledge on self-​evident beliefs or knowledge claims. C. If this analysis of Santayana’s skeptical regress is correct, then it is possible to distinguish the central thesis of his solipsism of the present moment from his fully developed doctrine of essences. In order to make this clearer let us adopt the distinction between a person who would be in a solipsism of the present moment and one who might be reflecting on such a solipsism, i.e., a philosophical observer. A  person within a solipsism of the present moment can make no assertions or judgments about the object (essence) presently intuited (Santayana’s term for bare consciousness) by him because any such assertion or judgment would be subject to error and therefore would not be infallible or indubitable. For Santayana it seemed clear that in order to make an assertion or a judgment about the given one would have to recognize the identity of the given and such recognition (such as “Blue now”) is subject to error because “identity…implies two moments, two instances, or two intuitions, between which it obtains.”6 If identity involves this sort of temporal relation, then it is conceivable that one may be mistaken about identifying that which now is intuited with what was intuited (if only an instant before). Perhaps another way of making a similar point would be to say that recognition and identification involve the application of concepts to the given and as such raise the

5 George Santayana, “A General Confession,” op. cit., 28. 6 George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (New  York:  Dover, 1955), 18; see also Chapter xii.

20 Chapter 2 possibility of a misapplication. Hence, for the individual within a solipsism of the present moment “all his heroic efforts are concentrated on not asserting and not implying anything, but simply noticing what he finds.”7 This “noticing” is only the blank stare of consciousness at the passing scene of the given. It is non-​judgmental attending to the self-​identical given without any assertion, belief, or judgment.8 As Santayana notes, a person in a solipsism of the present moment “would not be troubled by doubts, because he would believe nothing.”9 However, Santayana is not trying to convince people to adopt the position of the solipsism of the present moment, rather he is interested in the significance of this terminus of a skeptical regress. A way of getting at this significance is to ask how a philosophical observer might describe the solipsism of the present moment; he, at least, could make assertions about it. Suppose one asks if an observer could describe the awareness of the solipsist as something like “Red patch here now.” After all, if such a description is accurate and the described state of consciousness shared the infallibility and indubitability of the solipsism, then with suitable inference rules one might, at least theoretically, be able to reconstruct knowledge from such self-​evident foundations. However, Santayana would emphatically deny that such a description is accurate. The solipsist is only vacantly aware of the given, and the most one could say is that there is something present to consciousness, perhaps a “this,” that is only attended to and is not judged to be anything at all. If one asks what that something is, then Santayana maintains it is self-​identical, it is what it is, and one may well be able to say “This is this” or perhaps “red is red” if “red” is given no more significance than “this.” As Santayana claims, “self-​ evidence, or contemplative possession of a datum, collapses logically into tautology, and is not knowledge. Intellection without dubious claims can be found only in some self-​limiting sensation, intuition, or definition.”10 Hence, in Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana maintains that in the order of evidence the first belief (not self-​evident) that one possesses is the identity of given essences: Without this postulate [the identity of essences] it would be impossible to say or think anything on any subject. No essence could be recognized, 7 Ibid., 16. 8 John Lachs, “Belief, Confidence and Faith,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, x, no. 2 (Summer, 1972): 277. 9 George Santayana, Scepticism, 17. 10 George Santayana, “Apologia,” 515.

Some Remarks on Santayana’s Skepticism

21

and therefore no change could be specified. Yet this necessary belief is one impossible to prove or even to defend by argument, since all argument presupposes it. It must be accepted as a rule of the game, if you think the game worth playing.11 If this is a correct analysis, then any description of the actually evident beyond its bare presence and its self-​identity is subject to doubt and is therefore not self-​evident: “If I consider what they [essences] are, and how they appear, I see this appearance is an accident to them; that the principle of it is a contribution from my side.”12 When Santayana uses the term “essence” to refer only to the actually evident, then one may say that the awareness of essences is indubitable and infallible in the vacuous sense of the essence being what it is. But when Santayana uses the term “essence” to describe other characteristics of the actually evident, these descriptions are not infallible or indubitable, or as Santayana would say they are objects of faith and not self-​evident knowledge. Thus, the fully developed content of Santayana’s doctrine of essences (eternal, internal relations, tropes, truth, as well as specific characterizations of particular essences such as yellow, triangle, geometric, etc.) may be distinguished from the central theme of his skeptical regress. This fully developed doctrine is as subject to criticism and doubt as any other, but he would maintain that the vacant awareness of the given found in the solipsism of the present moment, once understood, is rightly characterized by indubitability and infallibility.

1

A. Santayana’s skepticism is radical and complete. In response to the strong foundationalist he denies there is any infallible or indubitable epistemic knowledge and in so doing denies the rudiments necessary for reconstructing our knowledge on foundationalist principles. But this should not be a surprise. Any radical sceptic worthy of the name sets out a program that is defined in such a way that no epistemological position could possibly answer it. For the radical sceptic asks that one construct an argument that concludes “there is no knowledge, and without that one cannot get the argument started.13

11 George Santayana, Scepticism, 114. 12 Ibid., 133. 13 William P. Alston, “Types of Foundationalism,” 24–​25. Unpublished paper.

22 Chapter 2 Santayana’s skepticism not only applies to strong foundationalism but to other forms of foundationalism as well. For instance, suppose that a sense data theorist were to argue that one does not need epistemic knowledge in order to reconstruct knowledge from its foundations. He might argue that one knows the immediate character of a sense datum infallibly and indubitably and that one need not assert that one knows (immediately that he knows such). That is, knowing that he knows requires evidence that is fallible but his immediate knowledge of sense data is not. However, Santayana’s approach is once again telling because of his argument that there is no knowledge of any form that is infallible or indubitable, even that of the immediate character of the actually evident found in the solipsism of the present moment. Hence, Santayana’s position, if correct, can be marshalled against any reconstruction of knowledge that has any form of infallible and indubitable knowledge as its base. B. In contrast to foundationalism Santayana does not attempt to refute skepticism but accepts it.14 This acceptance though is not a denial of knowledge: A great source of misunderstanding is the impression that scepticism means disbelief. But disbelief is not sceptical; it is belief in the falseness of a previous assertion. The true sceptic merely analyses belief, discovering the risk and the logical uncertainty inherent in it. He finds that alleged knowledge is always faith; he would not be a sceptic if he pretended to have proved that any belief, much less all belief, was wrong.15 Hence, for Santayana all knowledge is in some sense faith because it is subject to possible error and doubt. But that in no way means that knowledge is impossible, quite the contrary it is essential; and in his sense Santayana is a dogmatist. But he distinguishes two types of dogmatism: …the initial kind of dogmatist, having only sensation and fancy to guide him, assumes that things are just as they seem or as he thinks they ought to be: and if this assumption be challenged, the rash dogmatist hotly denies the relativity of his knowledge and of his conscience. Now I  have always asserted this double relativity; it is implied in my materialism. I am not, then, a dogmatist in this first popular sense of the word, but decidedly a sceptic. Yet I stoutly assert relativity; I am a dogmatist there; for I see clearly that an animal cannot exist without a habitat, and that 14 15

It would be interesting to examine how Santayana’s acceptance of skepticism sets him apart from Royce and James. George Santayana, “Apologia,” 516.

Some Remarks on Santayana’s Skepticism

23

his impulses and perceptions are soon directed upon it with a remarkable quickness and precision: he therefore has true transitive knowledge. But I  also see clearly that this knowledge, if it takes an imaginative or moral form at all, must take a form determined by his specific senses and instincts. His true knowledge must then be, in its terms, relative to his nature, and no miraculous intuition of his habitat as it exists in itself.16 Thus, in relation to the foundationalist Santayana accepts a thoroughgoing skepticism while maintaining there is knowledge, and in later chapters of Scepticism and Animal Faith he even maintains that it is possible to reconstruct knowledge on the basis of evidence17 though there is no rational guarantee of the certitude of the reconstruction. All in all Santayana’s skepticism is remarkable in that, if correct, it is a thorough defeat of any foundationalism based on infallible and indubitable knowledge and at the same time it serves to introduce Santayana’s own description of knowledge. 16 Ibid., 511. 17 George Santayana, Scepticism, 110ff.

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Naturalism: Santayana and Strawson 1

Introduction

It is difficult to imagine two philosophers more decidedly different in their approaches to philosophical problems than George Santayana and Sir Peter F. Strawson. P.F. Strawson is the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics at Oxford University and, according to W.V. Quine, “if one man were to be singled out as personifying Oxford analytic philosophy over the past thirty years, Sir Peter would be that person.”1 George Santayana, the Spanish-​born Harvard professor who died in 1952, is hardly recognized as an analytic thinker; indeed some have portrayed his philosophical works as literary, almost poetic, full of epigrams, and short of careful analysis and argument. Apart from these popular characterizations of the two philosophers, however, there is a clear and remarkable similarity between the naturalistic tenets of both philosophers. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of these similarities and to call attention to the thought of Santayana, an individual whose work deserves close scrutiny by those interested in the history of philosophy as well as those intrigued by recent philosophical excursions (perhaps retreats) into naturalism. 2

Scepticism and Animal Faith and Skepticism and Naturalism

Scepticism and Animal Faith, Santayana’s introduction to his mature philosophical system, was published in 1923. Sixty years later Strawson delivered the Woodbridge Lectures at Columbia University, and they have recently been published as Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. The parallel between the book titles is apparent if one recognizes that “animal faith” designates the most basic tenet of Santayana’s naturalism. The spelling of “skepticism” is mildly problematic. English and American spellings differ:  “scepticism” vs. “skepticism” respectively. Strawson is English but his lectures were published by an American press, hence “scepticism” in the quotes from Strawson.

1 W. V. Quine, “Four Hot Questions in Philosophy,” The New York Review of Books, 14 February 1985, 32.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_005

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Santayana, best known as an American philosopher, preferred British spelling, hence “scepticism” in quotes from Santayana. The present author has chosen to use the American form “skepticism” except in direct quotes from Santayana and any English source. Concerning these historical aberrances, the muse of history must clearly smile. Both Santayana and Strawson endorse a non-​reductive naturalism (as defined by Strawson): both proceed based on skepticism having to do with doubt rather than denial; both maintain that skeptical proofs are “idle” (Strawson) or “empty” (Santayana) and that skepticism-​rebutting arguments are equally idle and empty; both hold there are arational beliefs included the existence of physical objects, the practice of inductive belief-​formation, and the commitment to belief in the reality and determinateness of the past; both resolve questions of “correct” views with a relativizing move, and they do the same with moral issues; both hold views of the relationship between the mental and physical that are subject to criticisms raised against epiphenomenalism; and, finally, both face the issue of universals and adopt a position closer to “realism” than “nominalism.” Before one can appreciate the similarity of conclusions, one must overcome many dissimilarities in style, content, and terminology. Santayana’s festive approach to philosophy—​full of play and irony—​is not altogether missing in Strawson but neither is it a principal trait of his writing as it is for Santayana. Santayana begins his work with “Here is one more system of philosophy. If the reader is tempted to smile, I can assure him that I smile with him.…”2 Throughout this work Santayana maintains an approach that forces the reader to stay attentive if he is to follow the thrust of Santayana’s remarks and to appreciate his wit and rigor. Strawson’s approach is one of clarity and seriousness—​an analysis of contemporary issues and arguments. That Strawson does not even refer to Santayana might call into question any real parallel between their philosophical investigations if it were not for the fact that Santayana’s works, until recently, have been relegated to the interstices of philosophy. Strawson’s references point mainly to contemporary discussions (Armstrong, Austin, Ayer, Carnap, Davidson, Kripke, Mackie, Moore, Nagel, Quine, Russell, Stroud, and Wittgenstein) though he distinctly acknowledges the history of many issues through references to Hume and Reid, and mention of Berkeley, Collingwood, Descartes, Kant, Leibniz, Spinoza, and even a quotation from Heidegger. Santayana’s discussion focuses on the historical content of the issues (Aristotle, 2 George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1923), v.

26 Chapter 3 Berkeley, Descartes, Euclid, Fichte, Heraclitus, Hume, Kant, Plato, Protagoras, Schopenhauer, Socrates, and Spinoza) with little or no discussion of positions that were contemporary in 1923—​though clearly some of these were targets of his wit. 3

Strawson’s General Approach

Throughout Skepticism and Naturalism Strawson follows a principal pattern: (a) a type of skepticism is introduced in a traditional arena of philosophical contention (existence of external objects, grounds of morality, status of mentalistic language, and the existence of abstract objects); (b)  a reductive naturalism is discussed that has a dismissive attitude toward whatever cannot be exhaustively described and accounted for in terms of physical science (among other things, relegating phenomenal qualities, moral and personal reactive attitudes, and abstract objects to the subjective); (c) a non-​reductive naturalism is maintained that “recognizes the human inescapability and metaphysical acceptability of those various types of conception of reality which are challenged or put in doubt by reductive or traditionally skeptical arguments.”3 It is not possible in a short paper to compare Santayana and Strawson extensively, so I  shall focus principally on their views of our natural, inescapable commitments and the similarity of their views regarding perception and morality. 4

Inescapable Beliefs: Strawson and Santayana

4.1 Responses to Skepticism about External Objects Strawson discusses two basic kinds of skepticism-​rebutting arguments. The first consists of adopting an approach to language that excludes non-​physical-​ thing language as objective, i.e., forms of verificationism, or, more popularly, scientism. The second approach is a transcendental argument attempting to demonstrate that necessary conditions for experience include knowledge of the physical world or of other minds. Moore, Carnap, and Quine have each provided responses to skepticism about the existence of external objects, but each response, according to Strawson,

3 P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism:  Some Varieties (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1985), 68.

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results merely from accepting a convention:  the convention of choosing to persist in physical-​thing language as a framework of concepts for the organization of experience.4 The best skepticism-​rebutting argument in favor of the existence of external objects is that current physical theory provides a better explanation of the course of our sensory experience, i.e., better than any other hypothesis. But “no one accepts the existence of the physical world because it supplies the best available explanation.”5 Transcendental approaches may establish the necessity of believing in an external world, if they do, but this falls short of establishing that these beliefs are, or must be, true.6 Strawson is in agreement with Barry Stroud’s “The Significance of Scepticism” in maintaining that we should neutralize or defuse the skeptical question rather than trying to refute it, and the heroes of this approach are Hume and Wittgenstein—​I would add Santayana as lesser-​known but no less a hero. 4.2 Hume In Book I, Part iv, of the Treatise, Hume notes that all supporting arguments for the skeptical position are inefficacious and that all arguments against it are idle; one simply cannot help believing in the existence of body, or external objects: “Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem’d it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations.”7 Hume’s position, simpler than either Wittgenstein’s or Santayana’s, amounts to two items that are inescapable commitments: belief in the existence of body and the general reliability of inductive belief-​formation. What accounts for our having such beliefs is Nature. 4.3 Wittgenstein Wittgenstein’s position is more complex but also more enigmatic. In On Certainty one encounters passages and metaphors suggesting a parallel to Hume’s response to skepticism. Wittgenstein speaks of a type of conviction or belief as “being beyond justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal”8; and here Strawson finds an echo of Hume’s appeal to Nature and, even more, of

4 Ibid., 6–​7. 5 Ibid., 20. 6 Ibid., 9. 7 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 187. 8 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), 47e.

28 Chapter 3 Hume’s remark that “belief is more properly an act of the sensitive than of the cogitative part of our natures.”9 Strawson cites a string of quotes10 used to support the relationship between Hume and Wittgenstein: “Certain propositions seem to underlie all questions and all thinking”11; “Some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn”12; “Certain things are in deed [“in der Tat,” in practice] not doubted”13; there is “belief that is not founded”14 but “in the entire system of our language-​games it belongs to the foundations”15; there are “propositions, that is, which have a peculiar logical role in the system of our empirical propositions”16 that belong to our “frame of reference,”17 that “stand fast,”18 that constitute the “world-​picture,” which is the “substratum of all my enquiring and asserting,”19 or “the scaffolding of our thoughts,”20 or “the element in which arguments have their life.”21 Strawson’s examination of On Certainty leads him to conclude that Wittgenstein’s naturalism is similar to Hume’s but more complex. Wittgenstein holds that the propositions or crypto-​propositions of the framework are more various and variable than Hume allows. The framework—​or scaffolding, or background, or substratum—​includes the inescapable beliefs in body and the reliability of inducting reasoning, but he suggests there are others. Writing in 1950–​51, Wittgenstein gives as one example the proposition that no one has been very far [e.g., as far as the moon] from the surface of the earth.22 Wittgenstein, Strawson argues, also conceives the framework as dynamic with parts subject to revision and change. Finally, Wittgenstein does suggest nature as the one exclusive source for these prejudices. Rather he speaks of our learning as a practice, an activity, a convention from childhood on up, a practice that society instills within us leading to our beliefs: “…that is, they are not judgments we actually make or, in general, things we explicitly learn or are taught in the course 9 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 183. 10 P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, 15. 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 53e. 12 Ibid., 44e. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 33e. 15 Ibid., 52e. 16 Ibid., 20e. 17 Ibid., 12e. 18 Ibid., 22e. 19 Ibid., 23e. 20 Ibid., 29e. 21 Ibid., 16e. 22 P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, 16.

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of that practice, but rather reflect the general character of the practice itself, form a frame within which the judgments we actually make hang together in a more or less coherent way.”23 4.4 Santayana Santayana’s approach to the same issues is at least one step beyond Wittgenstein’s in terms of complexity, and Santayana’s explanation of our inescapable beliefs reveals that Santayana not only marches to a different drummer but that he also marches in a different direction. Santayana indicates the kinds of inescapable beliefs and their relationship in far greater detail than either Hume or Wittgenstein. And he, like Hume, refers to nature as the basis for these commitments, but he does so with an emphasis on physico-​biological processes rather than sociological communities of language-​users. Santayana’s insight was that neurophysiological approaches to understanding human action and behavior are moving in the right direction, and recent work with neurotransmitters and neuropeptides show this. Current work in the neurosciences is critically discussed in Nancy C. Andreasan’s The Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry (1985); Floyd E. Bloom’s, et.al., Brain, Mind, and Behavior (1985), and Richard Omstein and Richard F. Thompson’s The Amazing Brain (1985). Each of these works is consistent with Santayana’s insights. Santayana’s is a festive, dramatic approach to doing philosophy. He adopts the posture of a foundationalist seeking the bedrock of certainty on which all beliefs must rest. In so doing, however, his purpose is to show there is no bedrock of certainty and likewise that there is no escape from skepticism through reason or experience. Skepticism-​establishing and skepticism-​rebutting arguments are equally idle and empty. The only avenue open to us, indeed already undertaken, is our natural belief, our animal faith in the external world, i.e., the belief already implicit in our smile when he announced that “Here is one more system of philosophy.” Santayana’s philosophical antics allow him to depict both the foundationalist and the thoroughgoing skeptic in one characterization. Like Descartes, he poses as a skeptic “to purify the mind of prejudice and render it all the more apt, when the time comes, to believe and to act wisely.”24 But unlike Descartes, he also poses as a foundationalist to show the emptiness of that approach. The search for the foundation of reason and experience finds its culmination, for Santayana, in the “solipsism of the present moment”25 where the conscious 23 Ibid., 19. 24 George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 64. 25 Ibid., 17–​18.

30 Chapter 3 act is absolute and indubitable but where there is no knowledge because there is nothing to know.26 With such a position and such a conclusion, Santayana’s wit as well as his unusual perspicuity and rigor are revealed, particularly when you consider the work was published in 1923. 4.5 Solipsism of the Present Moment Santayana’s path to the solipsism of the present moment is similar to a position discussed by Strawson in the final chapter of his book.27 Santayana draws one’s attention to what is given in an instant of awareness, and he maintains that any knowledge or recognition found in such an instant must be characterized by a concept or abstract idea (or essence to use Santayana’s term). Concepts cannot be limited to particular instances, rather the particular object is seen as an instance of the concept and there may be other objects that are also instances of this concept or universal (essence). Hence, Santayana concludes that if one is attempting to find a bedrock of certainty, one may rest his claim only after he has, at least theoretically, recognized that knowledge is composed of instances of awareness that in themselves do not contain the prerequisites for knowledge, i.e., concepts, universals, or essences. This position is both a thorough skepticism and a thorough foundationalism that leads nowhere (in the sense that one cannot analyze experience any further). That both skepticism and proofs against skepticism lead nowhere is precisely Santayana’s point. Santayana’s approach is similar to Wittgenstein’s discussions of “seeing as” in Part 2 of the Investigations. There Wittgenstein is discussing the application of a descriptive general term or predicate to an observed object, e.g., seeing an object as green or as grass. He writes: “The flashing of an aspect on us [i.e., suddenly seeing an object as such-​and-​such] seems half visual experience, half thought,”28 and he asks “Is it a case of both seeing and thinking? Or an amalgam of the two, as I should also like to say?”29 Elsewhere he speaks of an “ ‘echo of a thought in sight,’ ”30 and that “what I perceive in the dawning of an aspect [i.e., in coming to see something as something] is not a property of the object, but an internal relation between it [the object] and other objects.”31 Strawson refers to these sections of Wittgenstein and adds his own suggested

26 27 28 29 30 31

For a fuller explication of Santayana’s approach see Herman J.  Saatkamp Jr., “Some Remarks of Santayana’s Scepticism,” included in this volume. P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, 81–​83. Lugwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Macmillan, 1953), 197. Ibid. Ibid., 212. Ibid.

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metaphors: the visual experience is “irradiated by” or “infused with” or “soaked with” the concept.32 Strawson’s use of the above discussion is considerably different from that of Santayana. Strawson is exploring the possibility that universals are implicit in our common and most evident experience—​“Platonism demystified,”33 he says. But Santayana is attempting to show that in common experience universal or essences are required for knowledge or belief and, yet, such universals cannot be contained in any single moment of awareness; they are intrinsically general. So one might argue that “seeing-​as” involves “thing-​of-​as” and that “thinking-​of-​as” already assumes knowledge not implicit in any moment of awareness. What is the basis for this knowledge? For Santayana, animal faith is the arational basis for any knowledge or any belief. It is the nether world of biological order operating through our physical, non-​conscious being. But such belief or knowledge is “something radically incapable of proof.”34 It is “a vital constitutional necessity, to belief in discourse, in experience…All these objects may conceivably be illusory. Belief in them, however, is not grounded on a prior probability, but all judgements of probability are grounded on them. They express a rational instinct or instinctive reason, the waxing faith of an animal living in a world which he can observe and sometimes remodel.”35 4.6 Santayana’s Animal Faith Santayana, like Hume, Wittgenstein, and Strawson, holds there are certain inevitable beliefs; they are inescapable given nature and our individual physical history. And like Wittgenstein, he maintains that these beliefs are various and variable. They are determined by the interplay between environment and psyche, i.e., between our natural conditions and the inherited, physical “organisation of the animal” (the psyche). That we now inescapably believe in external objects and the general reliability of inductive reasoning, for example, is a result of physical history and the natural conditions of our world and ourselves. Since these beliefs are relative to our physical histories, if our history and biological order had been different, our natural beliefs also would be different. As Santayana writes:  “The environment determines the occasions on which intuitions arise, the psyche—​the inherited organisation of the animal—​determines their form, and ancient conditions of life on earth no 32 33 34 35

These three turns of phrase are found in Strawson’s Freedom and Resentment: And Other Essays (London: Methuen & Co.), 57. P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, 83. George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 35. Ibid., 308–​09.

32 Chapter 3 doubt determined which psyches should arise and prosper; and probably many forms of intuition, unthinkable to man, express the facts and the rhythms of nature to other animal minds.”36 On this point, Santayana’s relativizing is more thorough than Strawson’s. Strawson maintains there is no question of an alternative view in relation to our commitments that are “pre-​rational, natural, and quite inescapable, and sets, as it were, the natural limits within which, and only within which, the serious operations of reason, whether by way of questioning or of justifying beliefs, can take place.”37 But Santayana maintains that even though our contingent biological history and circumstance make us unable to act on alternative commitments, this should not keep us from recognizing that the surd of physical change could give rise to animals with quite different basic creeds. 4.7 Santayana’s Relativism (Kant, Strawson, Nagel) The relationship between thought and reality is the subject of much of Santayana’s work, and Santayana’s theory of this relationship can be summarized in brief comparisons with the views of Kant, Strawson, and Nagel. In brief, Kant asserts that we can conceive of things only as they appear to us and never as they are in themselves. He has written:  “Doubtless, indeed, there are intelligible entities corresponding to the sensible entities; there may also be intelligible entities to which our sensible faculty of intuition has no relation whatsoever; but our concepts of understanding, being mere forms of thought for our sensible intuition, could not in the least apply to them.”38 As a result, the nature of reality is absolutely beyond the bounds of thought. Strawson, on the other hand, removes this opposition between appearance and reality by eliminating the Kantian notion of a thing-​in-​itself. The actual nature of reality may not correspond with our present conceptual scheme, but any idea of reality must lie within the range of possible human conception, evidence, and discovery. Possible human conceptions include all potential future refinements to our conceptual scheme, and therefore, current limitations are removed. As a result, the thought of a reality that can never correspond with our conceptual scheme is nonsensical. The real is not necessarily coextensive with our particular conception of it, but any particular idea of the real is coextensive with the human conceptual scheme. Strawson also holds that scientific realism is acceptable as long as one recognizes its relativity to a particular 36 Ibid., 88. 37 P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, 51. 38 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. by Norman Kemp Smith (New  York: Macmillan, & Co., 1929), 270.

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intellectual perspective.39 Hence, to claim a notion of reality beyond possible human conception is folly. If the idea of a reality makes sense, then we cannot claim the idea is beyond human conception except as a placeholder for something beyond our comprehension. Santayana agrees with Kant in holding that the nature of reality in itself lies beyond all possible human conceptions and appearances, but he also agrees with Strawson that we have knowledge of things beyond their appearance to us. For Santayana, all knowledge is symbolic of reality. This is not simply because it is based on how things appear to us, but rather because knowledge claims consist of essences, i.e., universals. We interpret essences as portraying the world, and, if the portrayal is adequate, we know so by our actions, i.e., by our survival and our well-​being. In this, Santayana combines his naturalism with his heritage of American pragmatism. Universals may reveal aspects of the particular objects, but not literally so. Essences are generated through the interrelationships of our physiology and its environment; they are relative to our particular makeup and circumstances of the world. Does this mean that no essence literally describes the world? No. But it does mean that we can never know it to be so with full certainty, though there may be strong supporting evidence to confirm our beliefs and on which we can base our actions with confidence. Santayana’s position is analogous to that of Thomas Nagel in The View from Nowhere,40 though the terminology Santayana uses is quite different from that of Nagel. The relativity of our knowledge of secondary properties is clear: To be red simply is to be something which would appear red to us in normal conditions—​it is a property whose definition is essentially relative…. The red appearance of red thing, on the other hand, cannot be noncircularly explained in terms of the former. To explain why things appear red we have to go outside the circle of color qualities.41 But with primary qualities, Nagel initially appears to hold a position slightly different from that of Santayana, though in the long run it may not be different at all. In contrast to Kant, Nagel favors the view that primary qualities are not reducible to appearance and therefore provide knowledge of reality:  “… 39

See his “Perception and Identity” in Graham MacDonald, ed., Perception and Identity (London: Macmillan, 1979). 40 See Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1986), 101–​05. 41 Ibid., 101.

34 Chapter 3 to be square is not simply to be such as to appear square, even though what is square does appear square. Here the appearance of squareness is significantly explained in terms of the effect on us of squareness in objects, which is not in turn analyzed in terms of the appearance of squareness.”42 Nagel differentiates between the form and content of thought. All thoughts must have a form “which makes them accessible from a human perspective,” but the content of a thought “may be quite independent of its particular form—​independent, for example, of the particular language in which it is expressed.”43 If one reduces primary qualities to the same relative status of secondary qualities, it must be claimed that primary qualities “drop out of the explanation of their appearance”44 the way in which the secondary quality of red is not needed to explain the appearance of red. However, for Nagel, this is not so for primary qualities such as being spatially extended. It is not clear to this author what other primary qualities, beyond being spatially extended, Nagel is considering. He seems to be considering those that are fundamental to theories of the physical world that there are “further and further removed from immediate experience,”45 but are these not under the adjectival aspect of being spatially extended? The primary qualities of physical theory are further and further removed from immediate experience, and it is reasonable to assume, until a better alternative is discovered, that these do characterize the world as such. Nagel examines several alternatives that deny the descriptive status of primary qualities. First, he recognizes the riposte that being spatially extended is characteristic of “our entire cognitive point of view”46 and not the world. This rejoinder, according to Nagel, only begs the question rather offering a better alternative, and it is a non-​explanation. Second, he considers the position that primary qualities may be essential features of our world picture, “so that we cannot conceive of a world without them,”47 but they also may describe the world as it is. If one supposes there may be better explanations for the appearance of primary qualities than is possible within our conceptual scheme, then these other explanations could never be understood by us. Hence, one may reasonably believe that primary qualities, insofar as they go, describe the world since they are a part of very explanation of the world 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 102. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 104. 46 Ibid., 103. 47 Ibid.

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we present, but we cannot claim with certainty that there are no better explanations. Santayana would agree with Nagel’s conclusion, but he would approach it quite differently. First, all discussions of reality assume the independence of the world from thought. Even the idealist, according to Santayana, assumes an independent world even though it is an independent world of thought.48 It is the autonomy of the world that accounts for the separation of thought from reality as well as the points at which thought approximates reality. Santayana is not as confident as Nagel that our notions of primary qualities do in fact characterize the world; they may, and there is good reason for us to act as if they do—​until better explanations come along. But other forms of life may ascribe primary properties to the world that are different, perhaps inconceivable to us; and it is a form of parochial projection to assume that the characteristics primary for humans and human actions are in reality also the fundamental properties of the world. They may or may not be. If they are, then it is remarkably fortuitous that the contingent forces of the world have generated a set of properties that accurately and literally depict itself. Developing an argument for primary qualities beyond those of our conceptual scheme, present and future, is imaginatively challenging. One cannot reasonably originate a property inconceivable to us. And it is unlikely that one will find a better explanation of primary qualities more limited than in our present one. In a limited world, primary properties that we now consider essential may not be apparent, but in such a qualified world, one would hardly expect to find better explanations than we already have of primary properties. Nevertheless, one might emphasize one quality more than another and suppose it to be possible for better explanations to occur. Spatial extension appears to be a feature associated with vision and touch. If one can imagine a form of life consisting predominantly of hearing, then perhaps a different set or understanding of primary properties would prevail—​ not necessarily inconsistent with those we currently hold. In such a world, hearing would be the indicator of independent reality (perhaps the world of porpoises is a limited parallel). Duration, rather than extension, may be taken as the primary quality of the independent world. Sounds might differ for the entities we now identify as tables, chairs, computers, etc., but their independent status would be recognized by the fact that they endure (their sound continues) apart from our conception (perhaps as in music) of them.

48

For a good discussion of this, see George Santayana, “The Latent Materialism of Idealists,” ­chapter 10 of The Realm of Matter (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 190–​206.

36 Chapter 3 Whether the audio-​world analogy is cogent or not, it is not important in the long run. For Santayana, positing primary qualities as characterizing the world in itself, is simply an avenue to acknowledge the independent status of reality from thought. Whatever characteristics have the weight of evidence on their side, are the characteristics one ought to believe and act on. Santayana would agree with Nagel that “the reality of the features of things in themselves that we have discovered is just as independent of our capacity to discover them as is the reality of whatever may lie outside our conceptual reach, actual or possible.”49 Santayana chooses more generally available adjectives to describe the primary properties of the world, rather than describing them in terms of the theoretical sciences that are further and further removed from everyday experience. For Santayana, “action posits a field existing substantially for science to describe.”50 He would not disagree with scientific descriptions; and, in fact, would maintain that for the most up-​to-​date account of the world, one must turn to the natural sciences and their theoretical explanations. But for Santayana, everyday life and its commitments are enough to engender an understanding of the primary qualities of nature. As Santayana reinforces: “Matter is the medium of calculable art,”51 and all human understanding is based on the essential and presumptive characteristics of the world. In Realms of Being Santayana identifies five “indispensable properties” of substance and five “presumable properties.” The indispensable properties seem to be those that reality must possess independent of the human conceptual scheme and independent of human action, i.e., these properties seem most independent of the world as it appears to humans. Indispensable Properties:52 1. Substance is external to the thought which posits it. 2. Substance has parts and constitutes a physical space. 3. Substance is in flux and constitutes a physical time. 4. Substance is unequally distributed. 5. Substance composes a relative cosmos. Presumable properties are also assumed in all human actions and are also closely tied to the very existence of human beings. They, therefore, do not

49 Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 105. 50 George Santayana, Realms of Being, 1 vol. edition, 201. 51 Ibid., 235. 52 Ibid., 202–​17.

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have the autonomy of the indispensable properties, but “since they too are assumed in practice, may be assumed in natural philosophy.”53 Presumable Properties:54 6. Substance, in diversifying the field of nature, sometimes takes the form of animals in whom there are feelings, images, and thoughts. These mental facts are immaterial. 7. The same mental facts are manifestations of substance. 8. The phases or modes through which substance flows are continuous. 9. The quantity of substance remains equivalent throughout. 10. Each phase or mode of substance, although not contained in its antecedents, is predetermined by them in its place and quality, and proportionate to them in extent and intensity. I do not wish to engage in a dispute over the accuracy of completeness of Santayana’s listings, but I do wish to note that he has worked this out in detail and with care. His language, though outdated by modern philosophical fashion, is rich in the history of philosophical thought, and such terminology should not cause us to overlook his contributions to naturalistic philosophy. For Santayana, our inescapable beliefs are those founded in animal action. He describes these human prejudices as “animal” in an effort to emphasize our biological base and community. This emphasis is similar to Wittgenstein’s reference to convictions that are beyond being justified or unjustified as “something animal.”55 Ours is a long-​standing primitive credulity, and our most basic beliefs are those of an animal creed—​“that there is a world, that there is a future, that things sought can be found, and things seen can be eaten.”56 And in Scepticism and Animal Faith as well as in his Realms of Being, Santayana attempts to spell out the “material categories” that structure human belief and action. He views his work as “a revision of the categories of common sense, faithful in spirit to orthodox human tradition, and endeavouring only to clarify those categories and disentangle the confusions that inevitably arise…”57 These categories include existence, substance, change, external and temporal relations,58 as well as other aspects discussed in The Realm of Matter.59 He describes these aspects and their relationships in some

53 Ibid., 233. 54 Ibid., 218–​35. 55 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 47e. 56 George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 180. 57 George Santayana, Realms of Being, 1 vol. edition, 826. 58 George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 114. 59 See George Santayana, The Realm of Matter, 202–​03.

38 Chapter 3 detail, in contrast to Wittgenstein’s only alluding to their variety, but, of course, the terminology he uses is quite different from Wittgenstein, though not so different from Hume. 4.8 Santayana and Wittgenstein Like Wittgenstein, Santayana maintains our inescapable beliefs are various and variable, but unlike Wittgenstein, he points to the form of our biological life as the basis for such beliefs. As such, one may credit Santayana as at least a harbinger of the neurosciences, though in 1923 comparatively little was known about the structure of the brain. As Israel Rosenfield has written:  “But how information passed from nerve cell to another through synapses remained unknown until the 1920s when Otto Loewi discovered that when nerve cells are stimulated they release a chemical into the synaptic gap….Until the 1950s only three neurotransmitters were known and nobody suspected that there were others yet to be discovered.”60 Santayana would not be opposed to Wittgenstein’s notion of “form of life” representing a community of language-​users, but he would suggest that the natural environment and our physiological base are the mute, arational ground for the habits and prejudices that find expression in our language communities. And, at bottom, it is this base that provides the grounds for agreement or disagreement in language. As Santayana writes: “Irrelevance, incongruity, and contradiction are accordingly possible in discourse only because discourse is not a play of essences but a play of attention upon them; which attention is no impartial exercise of spirit, but a manifestation of interest, preference, and preoccupation. A hidden life is at work.”61 4.9 Non-​reductive Naturalism Why then is Santayana not a reductive naturalist? He might easily, or so it may seem, have maintained that “seeing-​as” does involve “thinking-​of-​as,” but that “thinking-​of-​as” also must be understood as an action or behavior—​the mute workings of our psyches. The common experience of seeing something as such-​and-​such could be interpreted as a reference to the person’s disposition to act or treat the object in a certain way, or a disposition to speak about it or describe it in a certain fashion. But such an equation is rejected by Santayana.

60 61

Israel Rosenfield, “The New Brain.” The New York Review of Books, Vol. 32, no. 4 (March 14, 1985): 34. George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 137.

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His world is populated with realms of reality (matter, essence, and spirit or consciousness) even though he believes that the physical world provides the only base for existence and that genuine explanation is found in the natural sciences.62 Like Strawson, Santayana is a non-​reductive, or catholic, naturalist because he too uses a relativizing move to reconcile different perspectives on existence. All knowledge is perspectival, scientific knowledge no less than any other. Scientific knowledge is bound to human conditions and concerns, and it results as much from our natural history as do our social relations and individual characteristics. The natural world does not contain any principles of explanation a priori, rather explanations, even scientific ones, are the results of animal interests projected onto nature.63 “The forms of the good are divergent.”64 This is because they are embedded in the psyches of every animal. To the extent that psyches have a similar natural history, their moral outlooks are likely to be similar, but given the variability of nature one should not expect a convergence of views. Knowing there is this divergence, a person should not maintain his narrow provincial attitudes simply because, by chance, they are his. Indeed, with the emphasis on “animal,” Santayana is openly driving us beyond human concerns alone—​given current environmental knowledge, we also may be driven beyond the provincialism of mammalian and animal concerns. Santayana balances his detached, centerless account by noting that each form of the good is definite and final. We cannot cultivate an indiscriminate sympathy with every form of existence because we are inescapably committed to the specific and definite form (or forms) that finds its basis in our physiology and our relation to the environment. This highlights the first and most fundamental principle in morals: integrity or self-​definition. Or as Santayana himself writes: “…integrity or self-​definition is and remains first and fundamental in morals: and the right of alien natures to pursue their proper aims can never abolish our right to pursue ours.”65

62 Ibid., 109. 63 Ibid., 208. 64 This quote is from an unpublished marginal heading in Santayana’s Persons and Places, chapter xi. This heading, along with 645 more headings, has never been published. They will be included in Volume i of The Works of George Santayana, edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., to be published by mit Press in 1986. 65 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 170.

40 Chapter 3 5

Perception and Morality: Strawson and Santayana

5.1 Strawson: Phenomenal Properties Strawson’s relativizing move comes into play when he portrays the hard-​liner (i.e., the reductive naturalist) as maintaining that phenomenal properties belong, at best, to the subjective character of our perceptual experience.66 No such phenomenal properties really belong to physical objects at all, rather physical science describes the real or corrects view of the properties of the physical world. Strawson sees such a conflict as one naturalism set up in challenge to another. We cannot help but view the physical world as phenomenally propertied; this is one of our inescapable natural commitments. At the same time, a reductive naturalism holds that the objective view of the world consists of physical facts, not phenomenal properties, and that phenomenal properties can be accounted for in physical theory without suggesting they really characterize existence.67 Once we acknowledge the relativity of these really’s to different standpoints, to different standards of the real, the appearance of contradiction between these positions disappears; the same thing can both be, and not be, phenomenally propertied.68 A reductionist reply to Strawson might be that, indeed, there is no real conflict between the two perspectives:  the physicist can agree that the table is smooth and hard, but he goes on to provide the microphysical detail of what constitutes smoothness and hardness.69 Strawson would not attempt to rebut such an argument, but rather he would maintain that “really” is the term concealed when the reductionist says that smoothness is [really] constituted by microphysical detail. Thus the reductionist makes the apparent phenomenal properties illusory. The non-​reductive position is not a rebuttal, but a portrayal of what Strawson considers an unacceptable result.70 66 P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, 43. 67 Ibid., 42–​45. 68 Ibid., 45. 69 Willard Van Orman Quine, “Four Hot Questions in Philosophy,” 32. 70 As Strawson writes: “…not that it is mistaken to think of the physical world in the abstract terms of physical science which allow no place in it for phenomenal qualities; nor that it is mistaken to think of the world of human behavior in the purely naturalistic terms which exclude moral praise or blame; only that it is mistaken to think of these views of the world as genuinely incompatible with the view of physical things as being, in the most unsophisticated sense of the words, colored or plain, hard or soft, noisy or silent; and with the view of human actions as, sometimes, noble or mean, admirable or despicable, good or evil, right or wrong. Though we can, by an intellectual effort, occupy at times, and for a time, the former pair of standpoints, we cannot give up the latter pair of standpoints. This last is the point on which the non-​reductive naturalist, as I have called him, insists. What the relativizing move does is to remove the appearance of incompatibility between

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Strawson’s final position is not entirely clear to me. True, the relativizing may avoid a final conflict between the two perspectives, but it does not answer the question of the relationship between the two. Physical theory attempts to account for phenomenal properties based on microphysical detail, but does Strawson wish to maintain that the phenomenal properties are something beyond this detail? If not, his position seems to fade into a reductionistic one, and if so, he has not given an account of this difference. 5.2 Santayana: Explanatory Reductionism Santayana’s approach is to maintain that phenomenal properties are indeed something beyond the details of physical science, while he simultaneously maintains that physical science provides the only avenue of explanation for existence and for phenomenal properties. In recognizing an object as such-​ and-​such, experience is infused (using Strawson’s term) with the universal, an essence (using Santayana’s term). But universals are not particular facts, they are simply what they are, universals. Hence, for Santayana the barest experience, even the simple animal recognition of food or shelter, carries with it elements that cannot be reduced to a particular fact, a collection of facts, or behavioral dispositions. And for Santayana, there is no problem in saying that these elements are illusory if one only means that they are not actually a part of the physical world, indeed universals or essences cannot be a part of physical existence by their very nature. As Santayana writes: “In the routine of animal life, an appearance may be normal or abnormal, and animal faith or practical intellect may interpret it in any way practically right or wrong; but in itself every appearance, just because it is an appearance, is an illusion.”71 Universals, like natural facts, are neutral in relation to the concerns of the living. It is only the driven interests of the particular organism, shaped by its history, environment, and specific circumstances, that make any experience significant for it or its community: “The immediate visionary datum is never the intended object, but always a pathological symptom, a term in discourse, a description proffered at that moment by that feeling for that object, different

71

members of the two pairs of views. Without the relativizing move, the scientific hard-​liner, or reductive naturalist, could stick to his line; admitting that we live most of our lives in a state of unavoidable illusion. The relativizing move averts this (to most) unpalatable conclusion. It would surely be an extreme of self-​mortifying intellectual Puritanism which would see in this very fact a reason for rejecting that move.” P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, 49–​50. George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 63. To “appear-​as” is like Wittgenstein’s “seeing-​as.”

42 Chapter 3 for each channel of sense, translating digestibility into taste, salubrity into freshness, distance into size, refraction into colour, attitude into outline, distribution into perspective, and immersing everything in a moral medium, where it becomes a good or an evil, as it cannot be save to animal sympathy.”72 Physical, scientific description is no less bound to universals than is perceptual description. So why should Santayana give precedence to physical science in accounting for events in the world? Several reasons may be suggested. First, it seems possible, at least theoretically, to account for conscious experience based on physical theory; and such explanations appear to be on the rise (for example, current treatment of schizophrenia and depression based on neurotransmitter imbalances). Secondly, physical theory attempts to provide explanations not bound by any particular human perspective but consistent with every perspective. As such, the accounts, if accepted, appear to indicate a fundamental, basic reality that undergirds all events and experience. Thirdly, within the scientific community there is general agreement on what constitutes many basic tenets of scientific theory as well as basic agreement on methodologies for determining correctness. Wittgenstein might well refer to a linguistic community that guarantees such agreement, but Santayana, playing on the notion that all experience is illusory, maintains that it is “normal madness” in the human or animal community that undergirds correct views. That is, in ordinary animal action, it is experience, habits, and inherited tendencies that enable an animal to survive, adapt, and, if fortunate, to live well. In animals this hidden intent is often called instinct. But reason is no less instinctual for humans than the practical intellect of hunting, finding, and killing rabbits is for the eagle. Scientists are driven by instinctual reason. But since all knowledge, even that of science, is perspectival, once cannot overlook its relation to the perceiver or the unlikelihood that any particular explanation, even that of science, is literally true. If certain biological outlooks are correct, it may be that our principal drive is for survival through adaptability, and that hidden in scientific and everyday life is simply the desire to survive, to continue our genetic structure. This drive would be part of the hidden life at work in our behavior. Through the centuries we have learned to give meaning to events in our lives and to survive. The explanations we offer are adequate for survival up to now, but their only guarantee is simply the “normal madness” that we interpret events as we do and that we are successful in doing so. “Normal madness” meets Wittgenstein’s public criteria: an inward process is in need of an outward criteria. In everyday life 72 Ibid., 64.

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there is a “normal madness” of ascribing color, solidity, and stability to objects even though we are aware that their microscopic detail is otherwise. In scientific theory, the “normal madness” focuses on seething multitudes of particles in motion. The two views are not incompatible; they are normal for their purposes. But Santayana clearly accepts, at least theoretically, that the scientific perspective can account for everyday experience and behavior. For Santayana, neurobiological science may indicate the neutral, contingent reality of our drive to act and to survive, but this does not reduce human life to the realm of neutral, factual occurrences. Scientific explanation may be adequate to account for our survival, but it does not indicate why life is worth surviving. All the peculiarly subjective, phenomenal properties and moral values that color our lives provide the uniquely poetic, dramatic thrust of human existence. Illusory as they may, they are what makes survival worthwhile. 6

Morality

6.1 Strawson: Reductive Naturalism and Morality Strawson analyzes moral issues in a fashion similar to his approach to perception: there is a reductive and a non-​reductive account of morality and the non-​ reductive account is preferred. The reductive account of morality centers on the facts (natural occurrences) of morality and maintains that the phenomenal characteristics of morality (gratitude or resentment, moral approval or blame, moral self-​approval or remorse) may be accounted for through a careful study of natural history. That each person is prone to personal and moral reactive attitudes in general is accepted by the reductive naturalist, but personal or even interpersonal attitudes are only that, they are objective occurrences subject to scientific investigation. Scientists will note these occurrences in the same way they can gather data and explanatory information on any reactive behavior, but such behavior should be understood as events in the natural world and not accounts that reveal moral right or wrong. The idea of objective moral right or wrong, moral desert, moral good or evil, is a human illusion, as Spinoza held; or, at best, as John Mackie put it, a human invention.73 As Strawson writes: “All there is in this area is human behavior and human reactions to human behavior, both, indeed, proper objects for study and understanding; but no more.”74 73 74

See John Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin Books, 1997). P.F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, 37.

44 Chapter 3 Rather than attempting to view human behavior from a detached, objective perspective (as sub specie aeternitatis), the non-​reductive naturalist sees the individual as a social being participating and committed to society. This is a commitment we do not choose. Using Wittgenstein’s idiom, it is a language game we cannot help playing, though its form may change with time or be subject to local variation. Human beings are inescapably social, inescapably involved, inescapably committed. From the standpoint of participation and involvement, it is essential and correct that some “human actions really are morally blameworthy or praiseworthy, hateful or admirable, proper actions of gratitude or resentment.”75 6.2 Conflict between Reductive and Non-​reductive Naturalism According to Strawson, a conflict exists between standpoint of the objective versus the participant, of the detached versus the involved. He writes: “Relative to the standpoint that we normally occupy as social beings, prone to moral and personal reactive attitudes, human actions, or some of them, are morally toned and propertied in the diverse ways signifies in our rich vocabulary of moral appraisal. Relative to the detached naturalistic standpoint that we can sometimes occupy, they have no properties but those that can be described in the vocabularies of naturalistic analysis and explanation.”76 Paralleling Strawson’s analysis of perception, the phenomenal moral properties must be counted as illusory if one accepts the reductive approach, but the non-​reductive approach relativizes the two perspectives by accepting both as accurate from its particular vantage point. 6.3 Santayana Like Strawson, Santayana maintains there are two approaches to morality. The objective, detached approach enables one to overcome moral provinciality and to see that it is an error to condemn another’s morals simply because they differ from one’s own. For Santayana, this objective approach should be rooted in the neurosciences that theoretically, though not presently in fact, can explain why human beings have such responses. Santayana uses considerably different terminology to express his views: “The forms of the good are divergent, and that each is definite and final.”77 For Santayana, the forms of the good are divergent because they are embodied in the psyches of every animal. To the extent that psyches have a similar natural history, their moral outlooks are 75 Ibid., 36. 76 Ibid., 38. 77 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 170.

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likely to be similar, but given the variability of nature one should not expect a convergence of views as much as an evolving synthesis of conflicting tendencies. Knowing there is this divergence, a person should not maintain his narrow provincial attitudes simply because, by chance, they are his. Indeed, with his emphasis on the “animal,” Santayana is openly driving us beyond human concerns alone—​given current environmental knowledge, we may also may be driven beyond the provincialism of mammalian concerns. Santayana balances his detached, centerless account by noting that each form of the good is definite and final. We cannot cultivate an indiscriminate sympathy with every form of life because we are inescapably committed to a specific and definite form (or forms) that finds its basis in our physiology and our relation to the environment. For Santayana, this highlights the first and most fundamental principle in morals: integrity or self-​definition. In describing his own moral development, Santayana discusses two significant steps. He writes:  “One step was to overcome moral and ideal provinciality, and to see that every form of life had its own perfection, which it was stupid and cruel to condemn for differing from some other form, by chance one’s own. The other step, rising above the moral dissolution that might invade a man who cultivated an indiscriminate sympathy with every form of life, made it clear that sympathy and justice themselves are only relative virtues, good only in their place, for those lives or forms of life that thereby reach their perfection: so that integrity or self-​definition is and remains first and fundamental in morals: and the right of alien natures to pursue their proper aims can never abolish our right to pursue ours.”78 6.4 Comparison of Santayana and Strawson Again, Strawson’s final position is not clear to me. By relativizing the two perspectives, objective and participant, Strawson claims to remove any irresolvable conflict and provides a natural place for both outlooks. But what is the relationship between the two perspectives? Does one account for the other and therefore is more accurate? Perhaps Strawson’s apt reply would be that from the perspective of each, each is accurate. But the objective perspective maintains that the subjective one is an illusion, a result unacceptable to Strawson. If this is not a contradiction, it is at least a paradox, and it is not clear, at least to me, why Strawson finds his non-​reductive stance metaphysically acceptable. Santayana, on the other hand, accepts the illusory, or provincial status, of the subjective moral perspective, but he also maintains that the objective, 78 Ibid.

46 Chapter 3 reductive approach is perspectival, scientific knowledge no less than any other. It is bound to human conditions and concerns, and it results as much from our natural history as do our social relations and individual characteristics. The natural world does not contain any principle of explanation a priori, rather explanations, even scientific ones, are the results of animal interests projected onto nature. Santayana writes: What is explanation? In dialectic it is the utterance, in further words or images, or relations and terms implied in a given essence: it is the explication of meanings. But facts have no meaning in that sense. …No: facts are surds, they exemplify fragments of the realm of essence chosen for no reason: for if a will or reason choosing anything (say the good) were admitted, that will or reason would itself be a groundless fact, and an absolute accident. Existence (as the least insight into essence shows) is necessarily irrational and inexplicable. It cannot, therefore, contain any principle of explanation a priori…79 Such illusion or provincialism we cannot escape, though we try our best. And what enables us to try our best, according to Santayana, will depend on the particular makeup of our psyches. Some psyches have more natural sympathy with others, some have little or none. Some psyches may have a best for scientific explanations, while others find the involved, participant, and centered approach to life more alluring. But the meanings we all find spring from the mute, physical interplay of our physical reality with the natural environment. Santayana writes: “Meaning, which is my guide in discriminating one suggestion from another as being the right one, springs from beneath the surface; it is a nether influence. It is a witness to my psychic life going on beneath, which can be disturbed by the intrusion of one event, or furthered by another; and this subterranean impulse break outs into judgements about the rightness and wrongness of essences—​utterly absurd and unmeaning judgements if the essences were considered simply in themselves.”80 Santayana’s world is a pluralistic one in which, objectively, no particular interest has any right over another. But since interests are embodied, we cannot, nor should we try, to cut our physical traces. In Santayana’s own words: “There is no dilemma in the choice between animal faith and reason, because reason is only a form of animal faith, and utterly unintelligible dialectically, although

79 80

George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 208. Ibid., 137–​38.

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full of a pleasant alacrity and confidence, like the chirping of birds. The suasion of sanity is physical: if you cut your animal traces, you run mad.”81 7

Conclusion

Santayana’s approach to reductive and non-​reductive naturalism emphasizes the perspectival aspect of all knowledge. As such, the distinction between objective and subjective, reductive and non-​reductive, is relative. Some views are more general, more objective, than others, but this is a polarity that describes a plurality within the natural world and within ourselves. It is perhaps similar to the objective and subjective polarity discussed by Thomas Nagel in his Mortal Questions.82 Objective, detached approaches seem incomplete because they leave out the individual or human perspective. The subjective, phenomenal structures appear as illusions or myths when viewed from a more objective, scientific standpoint. Santayana attempts to make the objective pole complete by accepting intersubjective illusions (normal madness) and making them aspects of the natural world. He then mythologizes the objective viewpoint by noting that it is more general than the subjective, but it is nevertheless perspectival and limited. 81 Ibid., 283. 82 See Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 206.

­c hapter 4

Hermes the Interpreter 1

Santayana: Pilgrim or Traveler

Paul Kuntz suggests that Santayana’s ontology harbors a Platonic hierarchical correspondence between the levels of soul and the levels of being. Santayana is a “Catholic philosopher working with a Neo-​Platonic hierarchical scheme of Jacob’s ladder” (“Categories and Orders”1), and his four realms (matter, essence, truth, spirit) adumbrate stages of a pilgrimage culminating in the spiritual life. The interpretation of Santayana’s mature philosophy runs counter to the usual naturalistic assessment which contains no categorical obligations or goals for either humans or for the universe. The naturalistic Santayana assumes, as far as possible, a neutral moral stance and defends only contingent orders of the world, not hierarchical ones associated with ultimate or final goals. If Paul Kuntz is correct, scholars need to closely re-​examine the works of Santayana to capture a new, more traditional, and religious aspect of one of the twentieth century’s best-​known atheists. Though I disagree with Kuntz’s interpretation, I appreciate his insight into Santayana’s realms of being and their integral relationship to spiritual values, and my remarks should not be read as a critique of Kuntz’s position but rather as an alternative approach to the philosophy of Santayana. We are indebted to Kuntz who, by calling attention to Santayana’s metaphors (pilgrimage, ascent, hunting, adventure), forces examination of significant aspects of Santayana’s thought that have been overlooked. He also highlights Santayana’s respect for Indian philosophy and underscores the Catholic-​Protestant tension that often is more than in the shadows of Santayana’s thought and friendships. The tension is not merely a difference between conventional religions, but it is a conflict between forms of life:  the Catholic tendency of celebrating life artistically in contrast to the Protestant tendency of valuing workmanlike moralities. Kuntz’s discussion of the Protestant heritage of James, Royce, and Russell decidedly contributes to our understanding of Santayana and his sometimes strained relationships with his teachers, colleagues, and friends.

1 See Paul Kuntz, “Categories and Orders of Santayana’s Christian Neo-​Platonism,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 9–​21.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_006

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Kuntz’s understanding of Santayana as a philosopher working within a Neo-​ Platonic hierarchical scheme is supported by textual evidence. Santayana does use Neo-​Platonic metaphors, and he characterizes the spiritual life as the culmination of human existence. But this evidence, I believe, should be understood in the context of (1) the development of Santayana’s materialism or naturalism, (2) his application of ontology in historical analyses, and (3) his view of himself as a traveler, not a pilgrim. Within this context Santayana’s decided view is naturalistic (or materialistic), and whatever ties to Platonism exist, they are more biographical than an endorsement of a Neo-​Platonic hierarchy or a Jacob’s ladder pilgrimage. 2

The Development of Santayana’s Materialism

2.1 At the Church Door In the soon to be published unexpurgated edition of his autobiography, Santayana indicates his intellectual development is marked by three steps: (1) materialism, and the insights that (2) the forms of the good are divergent and that, (3)  each form is definite and final.2 Santayana’s moments that “wavered between alternative views of the world”3 ended with his materialism, while recognizing that the forms of the good are divergent enabled him to “overcome moral and ideal provincialism.”4 Realizing that each form of the good is definite and final led to the ancient realization that “integrity or self-​definition is and remains first and fundamental in morals.”5 These three insights mark the mature thought of Santayana and are not consistent with a Neo-​Platonic hierarchy or spiritual pilgrimage. There cannot be a uniform hierarchy if there are diverse forms of the good, each complete in itself and not convergent with other goods, and therefore, many distinct paths to integrity. Neo-​Platonism and religious perspectives did play eloquent roles in the early development of Santayana’s thought during a period he describes as being

2 These three steps are described in marginal headings in Persons and Places. All marginal headings were omitted in current published versions of Santayana’s autobiography, but they will be included in the critical edition to be published by mit Press in 1986. These page references are to the new critical edition. [The book was eventually published as George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography (Cambridge: The mit Press, 1986)]. 3 Ibid., 169. 4 Ibid., 170. 5 Ibid.

50 Chapter 4 “at the church door.”6 His intellectual materialism was established by the time he was a “traveling student seeing the world in Germany, England, Spain”7; but it seems apparent that the full statement and development of his materialism did not occur until much later in his life. It was certainly in place by the time of Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923) but not fully so at the time of The Life of Reason (1905). Prior to the development of Santayana’s materialism, he was “at the church door” and clearly more open to religious commitments—​ commitments he would later call projections from a material base. 2.2 Materialism and Projection Santayana’s materialism led to his rejection of Platonism and Christianity, but, since he views them as projections from genuine interests, his appreciation for the richness and quality of life they represent is not lessened. In fact, Santayana’s four ontological realms and his view of the spiritual life clearly result from his rejection and appreciation of these and other views, but some of his most devoted readers were puzzled by Santayana’s Platonic-​like description of his ontology as well as his endorsement of the spiritual life. In characteristically self-​critical fashion, Santayana knew that his own explanations were the source of some of the puzzlement. Astonishingly, his efforts to clarify his philosophy resulted in no fewer than four introductions to the realms of being: (1) Scepticism and Animal Faith; (2) the Preface to the four-​volume Realms of Being; (3) the “Apologia”; and finally (4) the Introduction to the one-​volume edition of Realms of Being. The first three are subjected to critical scrutiny in the last. Though Santayana is critical of each introduction, their common theme is the introduction of the “fundamental convictions of mankind.”8 With Scepticism and Animal Faith, Santayana says he committed a “tactical circumlocution, and perhaps a misleading one, in beginning by a reductio ad absurdum of modern paradoxes.”9 His purpose in discriminating the “realms of being had been to reassert our fundamental convictions,”10 but philosophical argumentation intervened and left one not inclined to “recover his natural reason under the name of animal faith.”11 His second introduction indicated “how these

6 Ibid., 169. 7 Ibid. 8 George Santayana, Realms of Being. One-​volume edition. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), xxv. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid.

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kinds of reality may come to be distinguished by an animal mind in the presence of nature.”12 The third, according to Santayana, is “perhaps the best for that part of the public which is more interested in an author’s life and in what people say of him than they are in his works. Yet so labyrinthine an approach may block the way as much as it guides, and may end in utter confusion.”13 In all four efforts Santayana introduces the realms through a critical and analytic investigation made “in the full light of human experience and history.”14 He is not describing an outlook limited to his own perspective even when he writes in Scepticism and Animal Faith that the realms “are only kinds or categories of things which I find conspicuously different and worth distinguishing, at least in my own thoughts.”15 Santayana assumes an intersubjectivity of experience: “I think it reasonable to suppose that the beliefs that prove inevitable to me, after absolutely disinterested criticism, would prove inevitable also to most human beings.”16 Neither does he intend his realms to indicate a hierarchical ordering of the world—​an ordering that is the basis for justifying, directing, or criticizing human actions; such an understanding would only be a “metaphysical projection by which Existence is referred to the Non-​Existent as to its Ground” (“On Metaphysical Projection”).17 2.3 Metaphysical Projection Throughout his ontology, Santayana consistently indicates that matter alone is the contingent basis for any order in the world as well as for any order projected on the other realms. The realms of essence, truth, and spirit are non-​causal. One may project order and force upon these realms, but in themselves they have none. In the Realm of Essence Santayana specifically contrasts his view with that of Plotinus: “In contrast to such a Logos, the realm of essence forms rather a chaos than a cosmos. Any special system has alternatives, and must tremble for its frontiers: whereas the realm of essence, in its perfect catholicity, is placid and safe and the same whatever may happen in earth or heaven.”18 The realm of essence is the realm of every conceivable possibility. Projecting a structure on such a realm is to limit possibility to one’s home dialect and

12 Ibid., xxv-​xxvi. 13 Ibid., xxvi. 14 Ibid., xxviii. 15 George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1923), vi. 16 George Santayana, Realms of Being, xxix. 17 George Santayana, The Idler and His Works and Other Essays (New York: George Braziller, 1957), 116. 18 George Santayana, Realms of Being, 82.

52 Chapter 4 personal imagination. Santayana’s insight that the forms of the good are divergent reveals a chaotic realm of possible goods not logically or morally ordered by animal interests or talents. But a perspective of neutrality toward every possible good, an “indiscriminate sympathy with every form of life,”19 is a perspective one can only imaginatively achieve because its achievement is possible only by a physical being with specific and definite interests. One may recognize that every form of the good has its own perfection, and one may respect that perfection, but “the right of alien natures to pursue their proper aims can never abolish our right to pursue ours.”20 Each form of the good is definite and final. One is not justified in condemning a form of the good as stupid or cruel simply because it differs from another form, even by chance one’s own, but this does not diminish one’s right to pursue one’s own good. Santayana’s outlook suggests that one is not forced to choose between objective and subjective characterizations, but rather, the reflective life is a polarity between embodied interests and reflective imagination. Imagination is free to survey possibilities and perspectives, “free from good deeds, free from evil deeds”21; but it is dependent upon its physical origin. “The only control which I can conceive exercised over intuition is that exercised by matter.”22 If these roots are broken, madness, not wisdom, results; but wisdom is possible so long as one’s self-​knowledge reflects the polarity of poetic freedom and vested animal interests. Within this context there is a clear departure from Neo-​Platonic hierarchies and spiritual pilgrimages. Yet, the spiritual life is certainly one form of the good, and, for Santayana, its imaginative freedom is a goal of highest value. “It is only for the sake of this free life [of the spirit] that material competence and knowledge of fact are worth attaining.”23 The person christened Jorge Agustín Nicolas Santayana, whom we know simply as George Santayana, embodied respect for all goods and perspectives but cultivated his own with remarkable skill. He attempted to avoid the parochialism of his limitations and the projection of his interests on other beings or realms while preserving his own integrity by pursuing the values consistent with his own perspective. From the vested perspectives of animals in a physical world, order and causal force may be projected on the realm of essence resulting in a mental reality mistakenly being regarded as a material one. Such projections result from 19 George Santayana, Persons and Persons, 170. 20 Ibid. 21 George Santayana, Realms of Being, 548. 22 George Santayana, The Idler and His Works, 125. 23 George Santayana, Realms of Being, xi.

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embodied animal interests and do not reflect the inherent nature of the realm of essence. These metaphysical projections are sometimes regarded as factors in the world but it is their material base and not their projection that is the genuine causal force: We may give these factors a psychological name and call them wills or acts of will; we may even represent them to be conscious, or prophetic or an intended result; and we may thus assimilate Platonism to panpsychism or to the world of literary psychology. But…we shall not thereby avoid an ultimate materialism. The foundations of existence cannot in any case be other than existent, temporal, and arbitrary.24 In “On Metaphysical Projection” Santayana details how a Neo-​Platonic hierarchy is projected as marking the steps of spiritual progress. He analyzes the projection from matter, appearance, truth, unmanifested Being, and finally to Pure Being. Religious history identifies this progression as distinct steps in the path of spiritual knowledge: “I will not say the only path of progress open to the human soul, because life is elastic; but certainly the path hitherto most familiar and sacred.”25 Throughout this discussion Santayana is using the term ‘projection’ in the psychological sense of externalizing a perception, i.e., of regarding a conscious reality as an external one, and he concludes: So much for the projection of an ontological hierarchy, marking stages of spiritual emancipation, into a metaphysical world beyond the natural world, or taking its place. The fable is transparent. The supremacy of eternal things is moral and logical, not causal; and it would be impossible to pass genetically from pure Being and its modes (even if hypostatized into eternal substances) to thing contingent, changeful, and existent.26 Projections are fables. Only indirectly do they represent actual forces in the world; but their poetic beauty, imaginative freedom, and even their hierarchical orderings are to be admired and appreciated for what they are, not for what they are taken to be. The reflective person finds the polarity of disinterested contemplation and vested interest as the source of wisdom, and, like a philosophical traveler, he may observe and appreciate many orders and moralities, but he does not forget his animal traces and the source of his wisdom. 24 Ibid., 389–​90. 25 George Santayana, The Idler and His Works, 120. 26 Ibid., 123.

54 Chapter 4 Throughout the development of his philosophy, Santayana uses the metaphor of the traveler to describe the polarity of the disinterested observer and the vested interests of a particular being. 3

Santayana the Traveler

Santayana’s predominate description of himself is in terms of a traveler. There are clear distinctions between a traveler and a pilgrim. A pilgrim has an ultimate goal and (if well-​prepared) a hierarchical map for directions; but a traveler, though not without destinations, has no ultimate or final goal. His goals are contingent and his maps are judged according to their adequacy for finding desired loci. Through creative imagination and natural sympathy, the traveler may interpret the lives and journeys of others (including the pilgrim), but remains a visitor whose perspective is not confined to local circumstances and commitments. This interpretive stance makes Santayana’s writings unattractive to those who only value an active, committed, and productive life. From the perspective of those with “roots” in a region, the traveler may be perceived as distant, uninvolved, playful, and on holiday. The festive, holiday-​like celebration of the traveler marks Santayana’s thought as distinctive among the American pragmatists. Negatively, it is viewed as distant, Olympian, uncaring and pessimistic; it is a perspective perhaps tolerated if held by a guest, but it is not the vista of a friend with shared beliefs and commitments. Positively, Santayana’s outlook is considered liberating. Poetic and literary, it is a celebration of life that recognizes and understands universal (“catholic”) contingency and individual parochialism. Henry Levinson has ably shown Santayana’s sensitivity to the festive and ritual qualities of humanistic inquiry.27 This sensitivity runs counter to the outlooks of James and Royce and is decidedly opposed to the age of “industrial supremacy” where “every spontaneous faculty and liberal art” had been sacrificed to “the demands of an overgrown material civilization.”28 Santayana’s “festive criticism” is, according to Levinson, a form of cultural mediation as distinguished from judgment and, as such, provides a model for modern religious criticism.29 The religious critic is an interpreter, not judgmental from 27 28 29

See Henry Samuel Levinson, “Religious Criticism,” The Journal of Religion, 64.1 (1984): 37–​53. George Santayana, “Philosophers on the Bleachers,” in George Santayana’s America, ed. James Ballowe (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 128. Henry Samuel Levinson, “Religious Criticism,” 53.

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a particular perspective, but vitally critical of religious thought as a religious traveler might be critical and appreciative of many different forms and expressions of religious life. The festive, interpretive traveler is well represented in Santayana’s chosen god:  Hermes, the interpreter. “A traveller should be devout to Hermes, and I have always loved him above all other gods for that charming union which is found in him of youth in experience, alacrity with prudence, modesty with laughter, and a ready tongue with a sound heart.”30 Hermes is a kindly god “who does not preach, who does not threaten, who does not lay new, absurd, or morose commands on our befuddled souls, but who unravels, who relieves, who shows us the innocence of the things we hated and the clearness of the things we frowned on or denied.”31 Hermes the interpreter is at home in the world of discourse—​unraveling, decoding, and interpreting one perspective for another. Likewise, Santayana approaches philosophy as reflective discourse, understanding and interpreting many perspectives in the dialect of his own ontology without endorsing those perspectives—​a traveler with a home dialect. 4

Conclusion

Santayana’s naturalism permits only arbitrary, temporal, contingent forces as the base for projections of order on any reality. No reality has a discernable face except as projected from a non-​discursive, natural structure. Within discourse on any conceivable reality (matter, essence, truth, and spirit) one is on holiday—​a traveler visiting, appreciating, criticizing, or simply aware of perspectives and their provincialism generated by environment and physical history. For the particular traveler Santayana, the values of respect for all realms and integrity, often described in religious and Neo-​Platonic terms, culminated in a spiritual life without religious and Neo-​Platonic terms, and his pursuit of the spiritual life did not preclude him from realizing its arbitrariness among a diversity of goods or from realizing the finality of other perspectives. 30

George Santayana, “Hermes the Interpreter,” in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 259. 31 Ibid., 263.

­c hapter 5

Fiction, Philosophy, and Autobiography: Santayana’s Persons and Places Perhaps no major writer of the twentieth century has been more widely read and studied less than George Santayana. Santayana’s prominence is well known: he is likely the only philosopher to appear on the front cover of Time;1 his autobiography (Persons and Places) and one novel (The Last Puritan) were best sellers and Book-​of-​the-​Month Club selections; and his literary and philosophical works were widely published throughout the Americas, Western and Eastern Europe, and Asia. Hence, nearly forty years after his death in 1952, it is surprising and disappointing that Santayana’s life and work are not well researched and documented.2 The extent and the nature of Santayana’s full literary corpus may account for some paucity of scholarship. It is a daunting task to read, understand, and evaluate Santayana the philosopher, poet, cultural critic, and novelist. His published works are great in number and broad in genres. Beginning with the pencil of a seven-​year-​old writing short stories, and closing with the blue crayon of an eighty-​year-​old making corrections to philosophical manuscripts, Santayana produced works eluding easy academic classifications, works that reflect the complexity and festivity of his thought. He is a thoroughgoing materialist who places the highest value in aesthetic qualities, an atheist who counts religion as one of humanity’s highest organizing and creative achievements, an anti-​metaphysician who writes metaphysics, an academic who maintains that the worst environment for philosophy and literature is in the university, a sage of elderly philosophers who remains best known for his earliest works, an American philosopher and writer who was never officially an American. To make matters worse, the dearth of Santayana scholarship is maintained by a widespread and largely fictionalized account of Santayana’s life. His biographical reputation has composted in a heap of praise mixed with innuendo, 1 Time, 3 February 1936, cover, 75–​79. 2 The first full biography was only recently published, and it has decidedly helped to clarify and correct many of the misperceptions about Santayana’s life. (See John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987]). As more of Santayana’s letters and other unpublished material come to light, however, there is a distinct need for a further biographical assessment.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_007

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rumor, and falsehoods since his early retirement from Harvard in 1912 at the age of forty-​eight. The ferment and lack of biographical studies have resulted in a version of Santayana’s life that is widely accepted but false. Meager and sometimes mean, it renders Santayana as an outcast at Harvard, an aesthete in a practical world, distant and desultory, probably a practicing homosexual, who despondently left the academic scene in 1912 never to return because of his pariah status. This inaccurate understanding of Santayana’s life extends to his post-​Harvard years with the following summation: in the end, Santayana found a home in a convent in Rome where he died, isolated and unsympathetic to the horrors of both world wars. The provenance of this account is not easily determined. It is surely based in part on his clear difference in lifestyle and outlook from that of his colleagues and despite the appeals and offers of the administration, on his convincing Bertrand Russell to spend a year at Harvard in Santayana’s absence while agreeing with Russell that Harvard was hardly a place for the worldly philosopher, on his catholic (and Catholic) and European nature in a New England setting, on his being trapped on “foreign” land during both world wars and in enemy territory during World War ii, on his having no graduate students to carry forward his views in the last and most productive forty years of his life, on the inadequacy of communication between Europe and the U.S. in the 1930s and 1940s, and, perhaps most significantly, on his unwillingness to correct misperceptions of his life and work. Commenting on the widespread Harvard legend that he was so eager to escape the United States that he walked out in the middle of the class, Santayana said, “It’s not true. My departure from America was long and deeply meditated. But the wrong story doesn’t bother me. I  like false tradition even better than the true kind, because the invention itself proves that it comes from the heart.”3 Regardless of the origin of the fictionalized account of Santayana’s life, it is time for it to end. At least the bare outlines of Santayana’s life should be generally understood, and then perhaps one may expect a fair assessment of his work. The remainder of this essay is a short effort at both tasks. First, a capsulized version of Santayana’s is presented to counter some of the popular fictions about Santayana’s life—​recognizing that fiction is often more engaging than biographical detail. Second, the development of Santayana’s

3 “Spanish-​American Philosopher Recalls Farewell to Harvard,” Independent, Waterbury, Connecticut, 13 December 1950 (article in Santayana clipping file, Harvard Archives).

58 Chapter 5 philosophical outlook will be discussed based on newly discovered material in his autobiography. 1

Outline of the Life of Santayana

Focusing on Santayana’s principal residences, one can divide the geographical chronology of Santayana’s life into three parts: nine years in Spain (1863–​1872), forty years in Boston (1872–​1912), and forty years in Europe (1912–​1952). But Santayana’s own account of his life, also divided into three parts for his autobiography,4 more accurately describes the development of his person and of his thought: background (1863–​1886); America and Europe (1886–​1912); and Europe (1912–​1952). The background of his life basically spans his childhood in Spain through his undergraduate years at Harvard. Santayana’s transatlantic penchant for traveling led him to describe his years as a graduate student and professor at Harvard as “on both sides of the Atlantic,” a description he suggested as a title for the second part of his autobiography. Likewise, the third part of his life, “all on the other side,” indicates the forty years he spent as a full-​time writer in Europe after retiring from Harvard in 1912. It was not until the late 1920s that Rome became his principal residence—​Santayana was in his late sixties at this point. And it was not until 1941 that he entered a hospital-​ clinic where he spent the remaining years of his long and productive life. His age, health, and the inability to leave Italy for friendlier countries compelled him to take up his final residence in a hospital administered by an order of Catholic nuns. 2

Fictionalized Accounts of Santayana’s Life

Santayana’s long absence from the United States proved fertile ground for fictionalizing and dramatizing aspects of his life. Many of these inventions are intriguing and perhaps served to enhance Santayana’s legend, but there are at least four such accounts that merit close scrutiny: 1.

Santayana was a Recluse Who Withdrew from Harvard because of His Cloistered Nature and Because of He Did Not Fit In.

4 William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., eds., Persons and Places (Cambridge: The mit Press, 1986).

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Santayana’s Harvard years were remarkably active as an undergraduate, graduate, and professor. As an undergraduate he was a member of over twenty clubs, traveled to Europe each summer following his freshman year, and clearly enjoyed the adventures and frivolity of an undergraduate young man as is attested to by his letters to family—​particularly his father—​and to friends. Two of his graduate years were spent abroad, primarily in Germany and England, but his delight at being in academia began to dim with increasing restriction on his intellectual license. Josiah Royce, his dissertation advisor, assigned Santayana the philosophy of Rudolf Hermann Lotze as his dissertation topic rather than Santayana’s preference of Schopenhauer. Royce noted that Schopenhauer might be an appropriate topic for a master of arts but not for a doctor of philosophy. This was a misdirection that Santayana regretted even in maturity and led to what he called his “dull thesis for a Ph.D.”5 Santayana’s career at Harvard was productive, active, and remarkable in achievement. In 1894 he began what he refers to as his metanoia, an awakening from somnambulism. At about the same time he began planning for early retirement, finding the university unsuitable for his desire to be a full-​time writer. He found faculty meetings, committees, and governance structures largely empty and their discussions mostly partisan heat over false issues, and the general corporate and business-​like adaptation of universities not conducive to intellectual curiosity, development, and growth. He provides a general description of the Harvard faculty as “an anonymous concourse of coral insects, each secreting one cell, and leaving that fossil legacy to enlarge the earth.”6 But, in spite of this awakening outlook, his successes made possible his early retirement. At the same time, the new expectations and restrictions accompanying his achievements convinced Santayana that the academic environment was not the proper place for a serious philosopher with the desire to be a full-​time writer. After several books of poetry, Santayana, in his mid-​thirties, published his first philosophical works:  The Sense of Beauty (1896) and Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900). The Sense of Beauty was an outgrowth of his Harvard course on aesthetics. Contrary to the prevalent doctrines of the time, the work rooted aesthetics in natural sensibilities—​not in any refined qualities of mind—​and placed beauty in the natural order of the world as a construct and response of human and animal activity. His boldness in writing was again affirmed in his second philosophical book where religion and poetry are viewed 5 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 389; see also Paul G. Kuntz, ed., George Santayana, Lotze’s System of Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971). 6 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 397.

60 Chapter 5 as imaginative by-​products of the natural order, by-​products that supervene on the natural order. Santayana’s mentors and colleagues at Harvard were known for their views on muscular imagination; it was thought and imagination, according to them, that made possible the hope of pragmatic changes in the world. The offense was clear. Santayana’s emerging view was that thought was meaningless in its consequence but eloquent in its expression. Its value is not practical, but celebrational and festive. This was a theme not well received in a department and university attempting to shape and structure future generations by its documented impact on the nation’s governance and business. Santayana’s five-​volume Life of Reason (1905), however, was well received partly because it was misunderstood. Apparently Santayana had finally crossed the American line since it appeared to some that he now maintained the practical impact of mental constructs. Even though he expressed this in classical terms, it seemed to his American colleagues a welcome turn to practical affairs. Regardless of his reception, favorable and unfavorable, his notice as a serious philosopher was well established by the turn of the century. Long before his retirement Santayana was a celebrated philosopher whose writings were widely read and who was a frequent guest lecturer at major universities. In his last years at Harvard, there is evidence he was being courted by Columbia, Williams, Wisconsin, and Berkeley. His resolve for early retirement, however, is confirmed in letters to his sister in 1909. When he announced his retirement in May 1911, President Lowell asked him to wait and agreed to provide Santayana with as much free time as he wanted. Santayana initially assented to teach only during the fall term with a full year’s leave for 1912–​13. However, in 1912 his resolve overtook his sense of obligation to Harvard and, at the age of forty-​eight, he left Harvard to spend the remaining forty years of his life in such places London, Oxford, Paris, Madrid, Ávila, the Riviera, Florence, Cortina d’Ampezzo, and Rome. Harvard attempted to bring Santayana back several times and as late as 1929 offered him the Norton Chair of Poetry, one of Harvard’s most respected chairs. In 1931 he turned down an invitation from Brown University, and Harvard later tempted him to accept for only a term the William James Lecturer in Philosophy, a newly established honorary post.7 But Santayana never returned to Harvard, nor to America. Santayana’s distinctive nature is not to be denied. In background he was Spanish and Catholic, and Harvard with its Protestant, puritanical, New England roots was hardly his native soil. He was the only classical American philosopher who was a classicist, and his lineage and allegiance to Europe made him an outsider in a university he considered more and more parochial. His 7 John McCormick, George Santayana, 301–​02.

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numerous travels in Europe and Asia set him apart. His interest in art, poetry, and religion made his philosophy dubious in a department and university where practicality and action were becoming the principal marks of philosophical inquiry. But difference can both set one apart and also make one more interesting and more attractive. The latter was Santayana’s fate, and his last years at Harvard brought trips to major universities, receptions and parties in New York, and widespread recognitions and friendships. The death of Santayana’s mother on 5 February 1912, released him from his family ties to America and also financially eased his planned retirement. His mother, Josefina Sturgis de Santayana, became ill in 1909, probably a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. In May 1911 Santayana wrote to his half-​sister, Susana (residing in Spain), that their mother was comatose most of the time. During his last months at Harvard, Santayana visited his mother frequently and, finally, daily. She was slowly dying. Upon her death he inherited $10,000 from her estate and made arrangements for his half-​sister, Josephine (perhaps retarded), to be cared for in a home in Spain where Susana now lived and where Santayana first thought he would reside as a full-​time writer. This inheritance plus Santayana’s steady income from his publications made retirement easier. He asked his half-​brother Robert to manage his finances (something Robert had done for their mother) with the understanding that Robert or his descendants would inherit the full capital upon Santayana’s death. Hence, in January 1912, at the age of forty-​eight, Santayana was free to write, free to travel, free to choose his residence and country, and free from the constraints of university regimen and expectations. Santayana welcomed the release. 2.

Santayana was a Homosexual and This was a Major Factor in His Leaving Harvard. The evidence on this issue appears mixed and circumstantial. Some of Santayana most-​noted friends and associates were homosexual or bisexual, but he gives no clear indication of his own preferences. His life as a student certainly involved attraction to women as the letters from his travels indicate, and his family was drawn to express some concern over his attraction to Mrs. John Jacob Astor in 1909.8 In 1929, however, in a remark to long-​time friend Daniel Cory, Santayana indicated he was perhaps a latent homosexual during his early years.9 If Santayana was an active homosexual during his youth, this comment makes him a dissembler or perhaps makes Cory the dissembler since the 8 George Santayana to Susana Sturgis de Sastre, 18 March 1909, ed., The Letters of George Santayana (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955), 90–​91. 9 Daniel Cory relates that Santayana, in 1929 after a discussion of A.E. Housman’s poetry and homosexuality, remarked that “I think I  must have been that way in my Harvard

62 Chapter 5 remarks are recorded by him. Neither seems likely since there is no apparent reason why either Cory or Santayana would wish or need to disguise Santayana’s youthful sexual activities, and furthermore the established integrity of Santayana tended toward a blunt truthfulness about himself and others. Whether an active homosexual or not, Santayana held longstanding friendships with other men. The unusually high interest in the homosexual aspect of Santayana’s life appears to be due less to factual information than to the North American attitude towards sexuality, and it is not clear what direct consequences follow from conclusions in either direction. Whatever the case, Santayana’s courage in associating with and defending other men whose activities were deemed unnatural by many of Santayana’s colleagues can be considered admirable from several perspectives and was certainly risky in the Harvard environment. 3. Santayana Retired from Harvard to Live in a Convent. Santayana retired from Harvard in January 1912, and only on 14 October 1941 did he enter the Clinica della Piccola Compagna di Maria, a hospital-​clinic administered by a company of nuns better known as the Blue Nuns for the color of their habit. There he remained until his death in 1952. The thirty years prior to his residence in the nursing clinic began with twenty-​odd trips between England and Europe from 1912 to 1914 to find a suitable place to live and write. Settling on Paris, he found himself in London at the outbreak of World War i and remained in England, mostly at Oxford, until 1919 when, rejecting offers for a lifetime membership at either Corpus Christi or New College, he returned to his chosen life as a traveling writer. Paris was no longer his settled choice of residence, and he then was truly the vagabond scholar until his established patterns began to center more and more in Rome. 4. Santayana Sympathized with Fascism. There is no question that Santayana was politically conservative; in short, he believed that freedom derives from order and not order from freedom. Hence, he developed many criticisms of democratic liberalism that began with his youthful assessments of his father’s political inclinations and ended with Dominations and Powers (1951). He viewed the whole of human behavior as natural, an outgrowth of material heritage and environment, and when asked about the atrocities of World War ii, he, then in his mid-​eighties, noted the historic atrocities of war as a natural occurrence. This seeming distance from the tragic

days—​although I was unconscious of it at the time.” Daniel Cory, Santayana: A Portrait with Letters (New York: George Braziller, 1963), 40.

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horrors of war made him appear unfeeling to many, but his age, his family’s diplomatic careers, his knowledge of human history, and his materialism provided a perspective not shaped by the usual commercial and governmental interests. He found even the historical materialism of Marx an attraction because of its materialist base. On the whole, his own remarks, the nature of his philosophy, and his Dominations and Powers, set him apart from the fascism that has brought such human misery into the twentieth century. Santayana’s being trapped in Rome during World War ii did much to further the rumor that he sympathized with fascism, but this is to overlook his propaganda-​like piece, Egotism and German Philosophy, written during World War i, as well as his many efforts to disassociate himself from fascist sympathizers such as Ezra Pound. 3

Autobiography and the Development of Santayana’s Philosophy10

The publishing history of Santayana’s autobiography—​the work recording the development of his life and thought—​is tragic.11 As Santayana wrote to Cory: “I regard this edition of Persons & Places as a mutilated victim of war and dream of a standard edition, which probably I shall never see, in which the original words, the omitted passages, and the marginal comments (not headings, as in the Triton Edition) shall be restored, and the portraits and other illustrations shall be well reproduced.”12 From composition to publication, few modern textual documents have suffered more than Santayana’s autobiography. Intended as a one-​volume work to be published posthumously, it was published instead as three individual works. Only the third book was published posthumously in 1953; the other two were published in 1944 and 1945 respectively. The circumstances of the early 1940s caused Santayana, for the moment, to set aside his ambitions for his autobiography. After an unsuccessful attempt to leave Italy for Switzerland, Santayana lived in Rome for the duration of World War ii trapped by circumstance and by his age. At the same time, Santayana’s friend, Daniel Cory, was stranded in New York without any clear means of support. To assist Cory, Santayana arranged for the royalties of his autobiography,

10 11 12

An earlier version of this section appeared as “Santayana’s Autobiography and the Development of his Philosophy,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, no. 4 (Fall 1986): 18–​27. Persons and Places (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944); The Middle Span (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945); and My Host the World (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953). Daniel Cory, The Later Years, 251.

64 Chapter 5 whenever it was published, to be paid directly to him. In addition, Santayana’s publishers, particularly Scribner’s, were eager to issue what would become a Book-​of-​the-​Month Club’s best seller, and they urged that the autobiography be published piecemeal rather than as a whole. Furthermore, there was an undercurrent of fear that the manuscript might be destroyed or lost during the war. These circumstances convinced Santayana to permit the publication of his autobiography in three parts and to allow the first two parts to be published before his death. The typescript for book one was spirited out of Rome and delivered to Scribner’s sub rosa, and likewise the typescript for book two was privately carried from Rome to the U.S. when official mail and official channels would not permit it to be brought to America.13 Following these adventures, the fate of the first portions of his autobiography was fully in the hands of his publishers and editors since Santayana could not receive galleys or communication from the U.S. or England. These circumstances contributed to what Santayana termed the “mutilation” of his memoirs. Publishing was difficult and corners had to be cut. Some of Santayana’s remarks seemed to his editors, and even to Santayana, too hard or too frank for the times. The publishers feared lawsuits, and Santayana was concerned that his friends and family might be upset. As a result, editors were charged with “softening” the text as well as deleting material difficult to print (for example, marginal notes) in restrictive times. In 1941, Santayana, then nearly eighty years old and in the nursing clinic in Rome, was cut off by the war from the U.S., from his financial resources, and from his publishers. Not until the liberation of Rome did Santayana see a copy of the earliest book of his autobiography. Likewise, he saw the second book only after it was published in 1945. Not being able to read the galleys for any of the publications, he could only chide his publishers and editors for the state of his autobiography, and he did so with his usual ironic wit.14 But in earnest, he repeatedly expressed his hope for a grander, unexpurgated edition. 13 14

The first full accounting of the conveying of these transcripts from Rome to New York is given in Persons and Places, 591–​92. Santayana to Cory, 14 March 1945, “I see by your letter of Jan. 29th, that you have been officially debasing my pure and legitimate English to conform with the vernacular….” On 8 April 1945, Santayana says that Wheelock of Scribner’s has promised him “English spelling” in volume two and that “ultimately all three volumes will be bound in one.” But that, he says, “is not at all my dream of the final illustrated and completed edition!… You must manage to have, some day, an edition de luxe, to appease my Shade.” (Santayana’s letters to Daniel Cory are in Butler Library, Columbia University). To Otto Kyllmann on 23 August 1947, Santayana says, “I wrote these memoirs intending them to be posthumous; when circumstances led me to publishing them, I made some excisions….” (unpublished letter to Otto Kyllmann, housed in Temple University Library). And throughout it all his ironic

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The 1986 critical edition of Persons and Places restores significant passages that were omitted from all prior publications including lengthy sections on Spinoza, John Russell, Lionel Johnson, and members of Santayana’s American family, as well as 644 marginal headings (or marginal comments as Santayana calls them). This material was previously purged for a variety of reasons: Santayana’s wish that portions be published only after his death, publisher’s sensitivity about Santayana’s descriptions of his friend’s marital and extramarital relations, printing and production convenience, and a general desire to deflect some of Santayana’s cutting remarks. Restoring these passages renders the first unexpurgated version of Santayana’s autobiography and thereby the first chance for Santayana to speak for himself. And what could be more important for an autobiography than that the author speak his own mind! One extraordinary unpublished passage is particularly haunting. Imagine Santayana in his late seventies and early eighties composing his autobiography. He relies on his remarkably lucid memory, some miscellaneous notes, and four autobiographical notebooks drafted over several years. He is writing about Spinoza, who was his master and model concerning the natural basis of morality, but Santayana questions Spinoza’s humane sense of the good. He does not think that Spinoza “appreciates all the types of excellence toward which life may be directed.”15 Hoping to discard any ambiguity about his estimation of Spinoza, Santayana writes in his fine, clear hand “I will take this opportunity, since I may not have any other, of clearing my conscience of ambiguity in that respect” (emphasis mine). But even this opportunity was denied Santayana. This assessment of Spinoza only saw its first light of publication in the new critical edition of Santayana’s autobiography. The passage ends as follows: “The saint and the poet are hardly sane or authoritative unless they embody a wide tradition. If they are rebels, disinherited and solitary, the world may admire but cannot follow them. They have studied human nature by looking at the stars.”16 This and many other passages are restored in the critical edition of Persons and Places, volume 1 of the Works of George Santayana. Throughout the editing of Persons and Places, I could not help but reflect on the development of Santayana’s philosophy and, in particular, on his own

15 16

sense of humor had its say: “…I counted on dying, so that my indiscretions would all have acquired the impersonal authority of historical documents. I rely on Scribner to issue an edition eventually, if they think they can make money out of it. My idea had been, on the contrary, to help finance an edition that would have been a work of art” (unpublished letter of 3 October 1947, in the Harvard Archives). George Santayana, Persons and Places, 235. Ibid., 235–​36.

66 Chapter 5 account of his philosophical thought. For Santayana, philosophy is not a methodology, nor a metaphysics, nor an ideology; it is the expression of the values and beliefs inherent and discoverable in living and acting. This perspective is derivative of Santayana’s place, time, and ancestry, as well as of his creativity. In some marginal comments excluded from previous publications, Santayana describes three important stages in his thought. I shall use these comments as the basis for discussing the mature thought of Santayana and the manner in which his own life history serves as background and foundation for his reflections. The three stages are: first, his materialism; second, his moral relativism; and third, his sense of integrity or self-​definition.17 3.1 Materialism In Chapter 11 of Persons and Places, “The Church of the Immaculate Conception,” Santayana describes the development of his own thought. It is a journey from the idealisms of boyhood and from the intellectual materialism of a traveling student to the complete, materialistic outlook of the adult Santayana. Throughout this chapter he emphasizes the continuity of his life and beliefs, contrasting the seeming disparate tones of his developing thought to the overall unity of his outlook. He writes, “The more I change the more I am the same person.”18 In a marginal heading he records that his boyhood idealisms were never his genuine beliefs.19 These idealisms were not expressed in philosophical form, but they were “intensely felt by me to determine the only right or beautiful order possible for the universe. Existence could not be right or beautiful under other conditions.”20 Shortly thereafter he adds, But ideal universes in my head did not produce any firm convictions or actual duties. They had nothing to do with the wretched poverty-​stricken real world in which I was condemned to live. That the real was rotten and only the imaginary at all interesting seemed to me axiomatic. That was too sweeping; yet allowing for the rash generalisations of youth, it is still what I think. My philosophy has never changed.21

17

These three steps are described in marginal comments (headings) in the holograph of Persons and Places. These comments were omitted from publications prior to the 1986 critical edition of the autobiography. 18 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 159. 19 Ibid., 166. 20 Ibid., 166. 21 Ibid., 167.

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Hence, he notes, that in spite of my religious and other day-​dreams, I was at bottom a young realist; I knew I was dreaming, and so was awake. A sure proof of this was that I was never anxious about what those dreams would have involved if they had been true. I never had the least touch of superstition.22 Santayana cites poems,23 written when he was fifteen or sixteen, as revealing this early idealism, and he quotes from memory one stanza of “At the Church Door” where the realistic sentiment is the same. By the time he was a traveling student seeing the world in Germany, England, and Spain his “intellectual materialism” was firmly established with little change in his religious affections:24 From the boy dreaming awake in the church of the Immaculate Conception, to the travelling student seeing the world in Germany, England, and Spain there had been no great change in sentiment. I  was still “at the church door.” Yet in belief, in the clarification of my philosophy, I had taken an important step. I no longer wavered between alternate views of the world, to be put on or taken off like alternate plays at the theatre. I no saw that there was only one possible play, the actual history of nature and of mankind, although there might be ghosts among the characters and soliloquies among the speeches. Religions, all religions, and idealistic philosophies, all idealistic philosophies, were the soliloquies and the ghosts. They might be eloquent and profound. Like Hamlet’s soliloquy they might be excellent reflective criticisms of the play as a whole. Nevertheless they were only parts of it, and their value as criticisms lay entirely in their fidelity to the facts, and to the sentiments which those facts aroused in the critic.25 The full statement and development of his materialism did not occur until later in his life. It was certainly in place by the time of Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923) but not fully so at the time of The Life of Reason (1905). Within Santayana’s fully cultivated materialism, the origins of all events in the world are arbitrary, temporal, and contingent. Matter (by whatever name 22 Ibid., 167. 23 Santayana, “To the Moon” and “To the Host,” Persons and Places, 168. 24 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 169. 25 Ibid., 169.

68 Chapter 5 it is called) is the principle of existence. It is “often untoward, and an occasion of imperfection or conflict in things.”26 Hence, a “sour moralist” may consider it evil, but, according to Santayana, if one takes a wider view “matter would seem a good…because it is the principle of existence: it is all things in their potentiality and therefore the condition of all their excellence or possible perfection.”27 Matter is the nondiscursive, natural foundation for all that is. In itself, it is neither good nor evil but may be perceived as such when viewed from the vested interest of animal life. Matter’s indiscernible, neutral face is converted to a smile or frown by latent animal interests. But “moral values cannot preside over nature.”28 Principled values are the products of natural forces: “The germination, definition, and prevalence of any good must be grounded in nature herself, not in human eloquence.”29 As he noted in his Preface, “From the point of view of origins, therefore, the realm of matter is the matrix and the source of everything: it is nature, the sphere of genesis, the universal mother. The truth cannot dictate to us the esteem in which we shall hold it: that is not a question of fact but of preference.”30 Even prior to the idealisms of boyhood and the intellectual materialism of the traveling student, the force of contingent, material events is evident in the background, birth, and early childhood of George Santayana. The lives of both his parents were based on the contingent patterns associated with the lives of diplomats. His father, Agustín Santayana, was born in 1812. He studied law, even practiced for a short time, and then entered the colonial service for posting to the Philippines. He was a remarkable man who, while studying law, served an apprenticeship to a professional painter of the school of Goya. To his credit, he translated four Senecan tragedies into Spanish, wrote an unpublished book about the island of Mindanao, had an extensive library, and made three trips around the world. In 1845 he became the governor of Batang, a small island in the Philippines. He took over the governorship from the recently deceased José Borrás y Bofarull, who was the father of Josefina Borrás, later to become Agustín’s wife in 1861 and the mother of Jorge Agustín Nicolás Santayana y Borrás (George Santayana) on 16 December 1863. In 1856, he again met Josefina while traveling on board ship from Manila for Spain. Josefina was then married to George Sturgis, a Boston merchant, and their three surviving children were traveling with them. This particular trip took Agustín to Boston, then to Niagara, then to New  York City, and by 26 George Santayana, Realm of Matter, v. 27 Ibid., v. 28 Ibid., 134. 29 Ibid., 131. 30 Ibid., xi.

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steamer to England. His last diplomatic post was that of Financial Secretary to the Governor-​General of the Philippines, General Pavía, Marqués de Novaliches. He retired early due to the ill effects of the tropics on his health. In 1861 he returned to Spain and there, once again, met Josefina Borrás Sturgis, now widowed, and they married. George Santayana’s mother’s history is no less filled with contingent forces. Though Spanish, she was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1826 or 1828. She spent her girlhood in Virginia and Barcelona, Spain, and a portion of her womanhood in the Philippines. Her father left Spain for Scotland because of his political views. When they moved to the United States, he eventually became the American Consul at Barcelona. Later, when the fashion of the Spanish government turned more in his direction, he was appointed to a lucrative post in the Philippines. The voyage from Cadiz to Manila around the Cape of Good Hope lasted six months—​through one of the worst storms the captain had ever experienced. On arriving in the Philippines, her father discovered there had been a change in the political climate back home and that the high-​paying position in the Philippines was no longer available to him, but a smaller post, the Governor of Batang, was his. When her father died, Josefina remained on the island, establishing a moderately profitable export business, until Agustín Santayana arrived as the new governor. For whatever reasons, she left for Manila, met George Sturgis, married, conceived five children—​two of whom died in early childhood—​and then her first husband died. He was young when he died, his business was going badly, and his widow was once again stranded and this time with several children. A brother of her husband contributed a sum of money31 to help her, and she moved to Boston. In 1861 she made a trip to Madrid, met Agustín again—​he was close to fifty years of age and she was probably thirty-​five. George Santayana was born in 1863. The family moved from Madrid to Ávila between 1864 and 1866. Josefina seemed determined to raise the Sturgis children in Boston, and, finally, in 1869 she left with her two daughters, the one surviving son from the first marriage having left earlier. From 1869 until 1872 Agustín and George lived together in Ávila, and then in 1872 they traveled to Boston where George was left with his mother. The separation of mother and father was permanent. In 1888 Agustín wrote to Josefina: “When we were married I felt as if it were written that I should be united with you, yielding to the force of destiny…Strange marriage, this of ours! So you say, and so it is in fact. I love you 31

A sum of $10,000. The same dollar amount Santayana would inherit when his mother died in 1912.

70 Chapter 5 very much and you too have cared for me, yet we do not live together.”32 The contingent factors of his background, birth, and childhood from a backdrop for Santayana’s mature materialism. Here are forces beyond one’s reach, shaping one’s destiny, and at the same time providing a chance for a reasonable and good life. 3.2 The Forms of the Good Are Diverse After materialism, two other important steps remained to be taken before Santayana’s philosophy was “wholly clarified and complete.” Santayana describes these steps as the two insights “that the forms of the good are divergent, and that each is definite and final.” The first step enabled Santayana to overcome “Moral and ideal provinciality, and to see that every form of life had its own perfection, which it was stupid and cruel to condemn for differing from some other form, by chance one’s own.”33 Santayana’s moral relativism is consistent with his materialism. It is the neutral perspective of the naturalistic observer who, because he does not have the same commitments, can observe the behavior of others and value it for what it is, not because it coincides with his own interests.34 No doubt this insight was influenced by the diplomatic careers and lifestyles of his parents, their distant and respectful marriage, the experiences of the young Santayana in Miss Welchman’s kindergarten on Chestnut Street and in the Boston Latin School, the wanderings and deliberations of the traveling student, the personal and professional experiences of the young Harvard professor, and the success and travels of the mature, distinguished writer. It is clear that being Spanish, having a Catholic background, and perhaps being an “unconscious homosexual” set him apart in Protestant America. He nevertheless participated in and valued the American experience though he could never fully identify with it. Later, he chose Hermes the Interpreter as his god,35 paralleling his mature insight as interpreter of views and values. Hermes is at home in the world of discourse—​ unraveling, decoding, and interpreting many perspectives in his own dialect. Materialism provides the naturalistic basis for morality while the chaotic realm of essence provides unlimited forms for imagination and interpretation.

32 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 9. 33 Ibid., 170. 34 This perspective is comprehensively discussed in Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), but unfortunately, there is not a single reference to Santayana. 35 George Santayana, “Hermes the Interpreter,” Soliloquies in England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 259.

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Santayana’s naturalism projects a neutral, objective view towards the moralities, the vested interests, of animals. His realm of essence, likewise, is neutral to the realization or status of any possible form: “Any special system has alternatives, and must tremble for its frontiers; whereas the realm of essence, in its perfect catholicity, is placid and safe and the same whatever may happen in earth and heaven.”36 Santayana’s insight that the forms of the good are divergent reveals a chaotic realm of possible goods not logically or morally ordered by animal interests or talents. An absolutely neutral perspective, however, is not possible. Perspectives derive from some living being in a particular place and time with latent interests originating from their physiology and physical environment. Santayana’s naturalism is balanced by a polarity between the neutral, objective understanding of behavior and activity on the one hand and the committed, vested interest of the living being on the other hand. One may recognize that every form of the good has its own perfection, but “the right of alien natures to pursue their proper aims can never abolish our right to pursue ours.”37 Hence, Santayana’s second insight: each form of the good is definite and final. 3.3 Each Form of the Good Is Definite and Final Santayana’s philosophy rests on his materialism and on his humane and sympathetic appreciation for the excellence of each life. From the perspective of autobiography, however, Santayana’s clear notion of self-​knowledge, in the sense of the Greeks, is his most distinguishing mark. For Santayana, “integrity or self-​definition is and remains first and fundamental in morals.”38 Like his naturalism and his realm of essence, this insight establishes his thought in a wide tradition, and it marks his career and his personal life with distinction. Decided elements of his self-​definition are found in his retirement from Harvard and his life as a roving scholar. After Harvard, his daily activities and long-​term achievements were matters of his own direction. Free to choose his own environment and habitual practices, his life was festive and fruitful. Santayana was true to his own form of life to the end. Two days before his death Cory asked him if he was suffering: “Yes, my friend. But my anguish is entirely physical; there are no moral difficulties whatsoever.”39

36

George Santayana, Realms of Being (one volume edition) (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), 82. 37 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 170. 38 Ibid., 170. 39 Daniel Cory, The Later Years, 325.

72 Chapter 5 4

Epilogue

Santayana died of cancer on 26 September 1952 and is buried in the Campo Verano cemetery in Rome. The Spanish Consulate at Rome provided the Panteón de la Obra Pia Española as a suitable burial ground for the lifelong Spanish subject. Wallace Stevens memorialized Santayana in “To an Old Philosopher in Rome”: Total grandeur of a total edifice Chosen by an inquisitor of structures For himself. He stops upon this threshold, As if the design of all his words takes form And frame from thinking and is realized.40 Somewhat like the fictionalized accounts of Santayana’s life, these lines (especially the last two) miss the intent of Santayana’s materialism. But there is drama in Stevens’s account that focuses on the quality and strength of Santayana’s chosen life, and certainly “Chosen by an inquisitor of structures/​For himself” does accurately and poetically depict the decidedly clear form of Santayana’s life. Perhaps one can characterize the whole of Santayana’s life in the manner he depicted his early boyhood: “…a passing music of ideas, a dramatic vision, a theme for dialectical insight and laughter; and to decipher that theme, that vision, and that music was my only possible life.”41 40 41

Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (New York: Knopf, 1976), 510–​11. George Santayana, Persons and Places, 159.

­c hapter 6

Santayana: The Popular Stranger The word stranger often has a negative meaning, but Santayana refers to himself as a stranger in a most positive and extreme sense. He writes:  “I like to be a stranger myself, it was my destiny; but I wish to be the only stranger.”1 In Dialogues in Limbo he is the only stranger. There, in concert with Democritus, Alcibiades, Aristippus, Dionysius the Younger, Socrates, and Avicenna, Santayana participates as the “Stranger still living on Earth.”2 In one of these dialogues Alcibiades, Aristippus, and Dionysius join in a religious dance: “… and [with Alcibiades’ hands on the shoulders of his partners] the three glide away obliquely, first to the right and then to the left, in a measured dance.”3 Democritus says to the Stranger: “You, silent Stranger, do not follow the others on their festive errand, and have to-​day opened your lips. Perhaps you are offended at our enlightened religion.”4 And the Stranger replies: “Not offended, but helpless and envious, like a boy admiring from afar the feats of an athlete or the gleaming armour of soldiers on the march. It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.”5 The depth and grace of being fully enveloped in one culture may have eluded Santayana, but the appreciation and tolerance of many cultures and individuals along with the Socratic dictum of self-​understanding are two of the hallmarks that make Santayana both a Stranger and a popular stranger. For Santayana was popular in the sense of being well-​known and highly regarded. In Harvard College as a student he was a member of numerous clubs, regarded as the best student in the philosophy program and, according to William James, passed his Ph.D. orals with greater honor than anyone previously and for some time afterwards. As a professor, he eventually became one of the most sought out lecturers, and his books began to sell well even with his first philosophical work, The Sense of Beauty (1896). When he retired in 1912 from Harvard at the age of forty-​eight, he was a well-​known figure in American and European circles, with universities courting him for lectures and offering positions, and Harvard’s President entreating him not to retire. 1 George Santayana, Persons and Places (Cambridge: mit Press, 1986), 528. 2 George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), vii. 3 Ibid., 66. 4 Ibid., 66. 5 Ibid., 66.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_008

74 Chapter 6 He was later offered another Harvard position as early as 1918, and in 1929 he was offered one of Harvard’s most distinguished chairs, and two years later when he was in his sixties, he was offered yet another Harvard position.6 He appeared on the cover of Time (3 February 1936) in conjunction with his novel The Last Puritan which, along with his autobiography Persons and Places, was a Book-​of-​the-​Month Club best-​seller in the United States and was translated into many languages in Europe and Asia, as were most of his major philosophical works. Popularity though, was not sought after by Santayana. His actions, particularly following his retirement from Harvard, shunned accepted roles. He was pleasantly stunned by his successes in lectures and publications. And after 1944,7 found it amusing and amazing that many people, mostly charming strangers he says, came to see him in Rome (some of whom are in this audience tonight and did not remain strangers). 1

Film of Santayana from Al Feuer

For those of you who missed Santayana in Rome, we have a small treat: perhaps the only extant film documenting a visit with Santayana by two American soldiers following the liberation of Rome in 1944. This film clip was shown on the 6:00  p.m. cbs news in 1952 on the occasion of Santayana’s death. Al Feuer8 was twenty-​seven when he made this film. He visited Santayana four times, bringing gi issue bars of soap and chocolate to Santayana. He had been introduced to Santayana studies by Prof. Alexander Litman at the City College of New  York, where Dr.  Morris Raphael Cohen, of course, also taught and introduced many of his students to Santayana’s works. It is a very brief film clip, but one that provides a visual access to the manner and smile of Santayana.

6 He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature in London, and at the end of 1927, “John Livingston Lowes of Harvard had written to offer him the Norton Chair of Poetry in 1929, one of the highest honors Harvard can bestow….In April 1931, he refused an invitation from Brown University, but at the end of that year was tempted to accept still another offer from Harvard, to occupy for a term a new honorary post as William James Lecturer in Philosophy, the lectures to be published by the University Press. Dewey had preceded him as the first lecturer, and Bergson had declined owing to his health.” John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987) 301–​02. 7 Rome was liberated by the Allied forces on 4 June 1944. 8 Pronounced ‘Fower’.

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2

75

The Stranger

In this brief paper, I wish to explore the character and thought of Santayana as a popular stranger. Specifically, I hope to indicate why Santayana studies now appear ripe for careful review and robust development. But, first, a bit more on Santayana as a stranger. In Persons and Places Santayana writes: And the feeling of being a stranger and an exile by nature as well as by accident grew upon me in time, it came to be almost a point of pride; some people may have thought it an affectation. It was not; I have always admired the normal child of his age and country. My case was humanly unfortunate, and involved many defects; yet it opened in me another vocation, not better (I admit no absolute standards) but more speculative, freer, juster, and for me happier.9 “Humanly unfortunate” is Santayana’s own description of the fate that set him apart from others. Born in Madrid, 16 December 1863, he spent his boyhood in Ávila and came to the US in 1872 where he lived until 1912—​although frequently traveling to Spain, Europe, and Asia during his American sojourn (so much so that he characterized his student and professor years as being “on both sides of the Atlantic”). Becoming the famous “vagabond scholar” (as Bruno Lind called him), he lived in England during wwi and eventually settled (in hotels, not housing) in Italy, mostly Rome, by the late 1920s, and finally in 1941 in the Blue Sisters’ hospital-​clinic (Clinica della Piccola Compagna de Maria) on the Caelian10 Hill at 6, via Santa Stefano Rotondo; this final residence in Rome was his fate after several unsuccessful efforts to leave Italy for Switzerland during wwii. He remained Spanish by birth and Spanish by choice throughout his life although for most of his life he lived outside the boundaries of his home country. Even during his last year of life, then eighty-​eight years of age, he made his final, difficult and, as it turned out, dangerous trip outside the Blue Sisters’ hospital-​clinic in Rome, in order to renew his Spanish passport. He fell on the steps leaving the Embassy and was carried away in an ambulance, but he recovered briefly, only to die of cancer on 26 September 1952. Even his death was characterized by his role as a stranger. Requesting not to be buried in consecrated ground and ruling out the Protestant cemetery

9 10

George Santayana, Persons and Places, 539. Pronounced ‘Seelian.’

76 Chapter 6 in Rome, Santayana placed an unknown burden on both his literary executor, Daniel Cory, and the personnel at the Spanish embassy. The only unconsecrated ground in the enormous Campo Verano Cemetery was for criminals. But a fitting solution came. Santayana was buried in the Panteón de la Obra Pía Española, the Spanish Tomb, a small plot of land that is officially Spanish soil in Rome’s largest cemetery. And there, buried along with diplomats and other Spanish notaries, Santayana’s monument, literally, stands apart from the rest. His name, carved in a long piece of marble that includes many other names, is written larger than the others, and the marble extends out farther to incorporate the size and length of “Jorge Ruiz de Santayana.” And now the full Spanish Tomb is a monument to Santayana. Designed by a Spanish architect, it incorporates a passage from Santayana’s The Idea of Christ in the Gospels. It is a tribute to fate, one I believe Santayana would enjoy, that even in death, Santayana the stranger is buried on what is officially Spanish soil in a foreign country. Santayana’s fate was that of being different. He was a Spaniard who lived only briefly in Spain, a catholic philosopher who was not a Catholic believer, a thoroughgoing materialist who placed the highest value in aesthetic qualities, an atheist who counted religion as one of humanity’s highest creative achievements, an anti-​metaphysician who wrote metaphysics, an academic who maintained that the university is not a good environment for philosophy and literature, and an American philosopher and writer who was never officially an American. Not easy to characterize and not really at home in any particular locale, as his says, his host was the world. Difference can both set one apart and also make one more interesting and more attractive. The latter was Santayana’s fate; it was one of the aspects that led to his being a celebrated world citizen, and it provides the background for the rebirth of interest in Santayana studies. 3

Rebirth of Santayana Studies

Several figures in the Classical American Philosophical School (as my colleague John McDermott has called it) have undergone a renascence of interest. Dewey first, now James and Peirce, and Santayana close on their heels. My colleagues in the social sciences constantly remind me that the evidence for anything, anything at all, must be quantitative—​a position that deserves the famous Santayana ironic smile. However, along those lines, it is interesting to note that in the last decade we have seen the publication of the first three volumes of The Works of George Santayana (Persons and Places with Richard Lyon’s introduction, The Sense of Beauty with Arthur Danto’s introduction, and

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Interpretations of Poetry and Religion with Joel Porte’s introduction, and the fourth volume will be published this fall with Irving Singer’s introduction to The Last Puritan), over 200 articles on Santayana have been published and referenced in nine issues of Overheard in Seville:  The Bulletin of the Santayana Society—​a bulletin that Angus Kerr-​Lawson so ably produces and co-​edits in conjunction with the edition. The National Endowment for the Humanities has provided over $700,000 to edit the works of Santayana, and several individuals and companies have also contributed to this effort. There is a film script of The Last Puritan completed, and John Friedman, the producer, is seeking production funds to make the film. In addition, since the first volume of the edition was published, ten dissertations on Santayana have been completed, and there are at least three additional ones underway at this point, including that of Mette Pedersen (Yale University) who is giving her paper tomorrow. At conferences and symposia there are a growing number of papers on Santayana, including the Frontiers in American Philosophy conference (Texas A&M University, June 1988) and the Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial International Conference (Harvard University) and, of course, the 1992 International Conference on George Santayana that has brought us all to Ávila. Ignoring all the publications before the mid-​1960s and the large number of articles and book chapters on Santayana that have been published since the mid-​1960s,11 let me provide a quick listing of book-​length publications that have appeared. The authors of many of these works are in our audience and in preparing this paper I have looked forward with great pleasure to reading this list in their presence: José María Alonso Gamo’s Un español en el mundo: Santayana, poesía y poética (1966); Jerome Ashmore’s Santayana, Art and Aesthetics (1966); John Lachs’s Animal Faith and Spiritual Life (1967); Willard Arnett’s George Santayana (1968); Michael Pellino’s George Santayana and the Endless Comedy (1968); Jana Novozámská’s Santayana a Americká Filosofie (Prague, 1968); Jan Szmyd’s Filozofia moralna Santayany (Warsaw, 1968); Physical Order and Moral Liberty: Previously Unpublished Essays of George Santayana, edited by John and Shirley Lachs (1969); Beth Singer’s The Rational Society (1969); Paul 11

Excludes publications by Willard E.  Arnett, Santayana and the Sense of Beauty (1955); Richard Butler, The Mind of Santayana (1955); Daniel Cory, Santayana: The Later Years (1963), and The Letters of George Santayana (1955); Jacques Duron, La Pensée de George Santayana (1953); George W. Howgate, George Santayana (1938); Raimundo Lida, Belleza, Arte y Poesía en la Estética de Santayana (1943); Bruno Lind’s Vagabond Scholar: A Venture into the Privacy of George Santayana (1962); Thomas N. Munson, The Essential Wisdom of George Santayana (1962); Irving Singer’s Essays in Literary Criticism of George Santayana (1956); and Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz, eds. Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays, and Reviews (1936).

78 Chapter 6 Kuntz’s edition of Santayana’s Lotze’s System of Philosophy (1971); Andy Reck and John Lachs’s special edition of the Southern Journal of Philosophy (1972); Newton Phelps Stallknecht’s George Santayana (1973); Elkin Calhoun Wilson’s Shakespeare, Santayana, and the Comic (1973); Timothy Sprigge’s Santayana:  An Examination of His Philosophy (1974); Dilip Kumar Roy’s The Philosophy of George Santayana (Calcutta, 1975); Lois Hughson’s Thresholds of Reality (1977); William Holzberger’s edition of The Complete Poems of George Santayana (1979); Susan Bellingham’s A Catalogue of the Library of George Santayana in the University of Waterloo Library (1980); Herman Saatkamp and John Jones’s George Santayana: A Bibliographic Checklist, 1880–​1980 (1982); the 1984 reprint of Willard E.  Arnett’s Santayana and the Sense of Beauty; John McCormick’s George Santayana: A Biography (1987); Anthony Woodward’s Living in the Eternal (1988); John Lachs’s George Santayana (1988); Nynfa Bosco’s Invito al pensiero di George Santayana (1989); Pedro García Martín’s el Sustrato Abulense de Jorge Santayana (1989); and the Critical Essays on George Santayana (1991), edited by Kenneth Price and Robert Leitz. In the spring of 1992 three books were published: Henry Levinson’s Santayana, Pragmatism, and the Spiritual Life; Robert Dawidoff’s The Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage; and a children’s book by David Carter, George Santayana, in the Chelsea House Publishers’ “Hispanics of Achievement” series. And we have just received a letter indicating that Ediciones Cátedra has purchased the Spanish language rights for Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, and plans a 1994 publication.12 This is an impressive listing and I  fear important works and persons are overlooked in it. I apologize to those who have made significant contributions that have not been mentioned, and I hope you will be kind enough to remind me of other book-​length works that I have missed. What the list demonstrates is that the rebirth of Santayana scholarship is underway and, fortunately, it is the product of an international community of 12

There have also been several readings and recordings of Santayana’s works. In April and May 1986 wgbh, a pbs radio station in Boston, carried a reading of The Last Puritan on “Reading Aloud,” hosted by Bill Cavness. Recordings of Santayana’s works include: in the Collections of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, the three volumes of the original Persons and Places: The Background of My Life, The Middle Span, and My Host the World as well as the Critical Edition of Persons and Places, the five volumes of The Life of Reason, and Scepticism and Animal Faith; in the Collections of Recording for the Blind, Scepticism and Animal Faith, The Last Puritan, and George Santayana’s America:  Essays on Literature and Culture (ed. James Ballowe); in the Collections of the Texas State Library, Character and Opinion in the United States, The Last Puritan, and Dialogues in Limbo, with Three New Dialogues.

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scholars, many of whom are here today in Ávila. In the time remaining, I wish to adumbrate some of the reasons why I believe this rebirth is appropriate and timely. 4

Santayana: An International Figure

Historically, the turn of a century, fin de siècle, brings a reexamination of the foundations of society, science, art, and culture. The upcoming swing of a millennium, from the twentieth to the twenty-​first, is likely to bring even more foundational critiques as well as creative efforts to change, and perhaps to revolt. Santayana was a turn-​of-​the-​century figure. His novel, The Last Puritan, may be seen as portraying the dramatic changes occurring in America during the transition from a Great Merchant Society to a more democratic and commercial one, a change that made travel and commodities far more widely available than at any previous time. It was the finale for a particular class and their ethos, the last of the puritans, and the opening curtain for a new generation owing less to their predecessors, harboring more hope for their future, and recognizing a larger world community. Even Santayana’s philosophical outlook and publications were clearly not fully on one side of the Atlantic or the other, nor firmly rooted in one century or another. He saw the classical philosophical questions arising again and again in each century, and he increasingly warned against ideology, counseled for a clear understanding of history, and maintained with Socrates that self-​ knowledge is the birth of reason. With joyful Spanish irony he refused to yield to trends and continued to wrestle with philosophical and literary questions through classical terms and phrases, providing his own beauty of hand and withdrawing from absolute standards imposed on him or by him. Now, a few years from our millennial pivot, already the phrase “global village” is commonplace, and the struggle to maintain personal, regional, and national identity in a world community is upon us. Headlines and broadcasts drone the horrors of the hidden forces in us, working unreasonably but with their own heritage and environment:  Yugoslavia, Iraq, Tiananmen Square, Thailand, Los Angeles, to name a few. Santayana’s approach to public discontent and social challenges is both individualistic and naturalistic, and for some, it is too much of both. Largely, Santayana counsels self-​knowledge, and if his own life served as a model, it could lead to a cultivation of the art of individualistic living. But Santayana never suggested his life as a model. For him, as he says, life was “more speculative,

80 Chapter 6 freer, juster, and …happier,” but “not better”13 since he accepted no absolute standards. His motto might have read: Each individual to one’s own devices but with the cultivation, wisdom, and habits of the past, one’s own particular past, informing and structuring actions. His guidance in such development is clearly wise. We can all learn from his concerns about the deceptions of ideology as when he notes that “fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim,”14 and we can understand his oft-​repeated counsel concerning history: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”15 His agreement with Socrates that self-​knowledge is the birth of reason is also an ageless wisdom that in order to understand one does not have to be aged or particularly wise. For organizing and altering political and institutional structures, Santayana’s individualistic model may seem inadequate. But for many persons, finding a clear vision of one’s own good, pursuing it, and cultivating a life around that perspective, may be the key to surviving and living with dignity in complex and demanding social structures. Santayana, the world citizen, provides a model for the turn of the millennium. One that respects all nationalities and governments for their native intelligence and origin, but nevertheless remains true to one’s heritage without binding one’s perspective to any regional outlook. As my colleague, Pedro García-​Martín, has pointed out, Santayana’s home city of Ávila provides a picturesque view of Santayana’s native intelligence. Looking through the narrow portals in Ávila’s most memorable wall, one’s horizons open to a larger world even while one is firmly rooted in the medieval town. Open to the world but true to one’s natural self, this seems to have been Santayana’s guide throughout his life, and it is certainly not a bad guide into the next millennium. 5

Naturalism

Santayana’s relativism in ethics and his belief in the value of self-​knowledge are founded in his naturalism, a basic philosophical view that seems to have been seminal in Santayana’s thoughts from the first. Even during his boyhood considerations of religious faith he notes that “of my religious and other day-​ dreams, I was at bottom a young realist; I knew I was dreaming, and so was awake. A  sure proof of this was that I  was never anxious about what those 13 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 539. 14 George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 13. 15 Ibid., 28.

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dreams would have involved if they had been true. I never had the least touch of superstition.”16 This naturalism has many philosophical implications: it is antifoundationalist and places animal creativity and art at the center of all knowledge and action; it removes substances from imagination but replaces it with vital and festive aesthetic qualities; and it places the burden of explanation on the sciences while reveling in the joyful interpretation of the spiritual life. But apart from the more technical implications of his outlook, Santayana’s naturalism provides a general framework for understanding and living in a complex, contingent, natural world. Largely, he removes humanism from naturalism—​not in the sense that he believes human actions are unimportant or not to be considered, but in the sense that they are not the only beings of importance and worthy of consideration. From a natural perspective, all values are projections of physical forces and stand on the same neutral soil. Rising from that soil is Santayana’s festive resignation to the course of nature, to its silent ongoing processes. But this is not a resignation with a sigh; it is a disciplined resignation with an ancient tradition that calls for “festive criticism” and “festive interpretation,” to use the phrases of Henry Levinson. Calls to action may be needed to correct wrongs, to right injustices, but the foundational call of human imagination is interpretation, and for Santayana, interpretation that delights in itself, in its freedom and its scale. Santayana’s naturalism is not that of the youthful “muscular intelligence” of the early pragmatist, not the call to social action of the later pragmatist. His naturalism is a call to understanding one’s past and one’s place in a coursing, physical environment and to delight in that understanding and its illusions. As he says in the marvelous chapter “Normal Madness,” in Dialogues in Limbo: “Wisdom is an evanescent madness, when the dream still continues but no longer deceives.”17 Santayana’s philosophical outlook is an older, more ancient philosophical wisdom than that found in many of his colleagues in the Classical American Philosophical School, and as we are all getting older, as our societies, institutions, and cultures are closing another century and another millennium, Santayana’s philosophy deserves close attention. In his autobiography, Santayana’s descriptions of his life highlight many of the features accounting for our attraction to him and his works. “The more I change the more I am the same person”18 is the marginal comment beside the

16 17 18

George Santayana, Persons and Places, 167. George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo, 45–​46. George Santayana, Persons and Places, 159.

82 Chapter 6 paragraph where, at an advanced age and looking back upon his whole career, he provides us with the following summary commentary about his life: At bottom there was no real change, no awakening and no apostasy. There was only a change in the subject matter on which my fancy worked. I had new materials for my dreams, and other terms in which to express my secret aspiration. Instead of being an effectual poet I became, at intervals, a mediocre player; in both directions I was simply the artist. There was ultimately no material issue, in either case: it all inevitably ended in nothing. But in both cases there was a passing music of ideas, a dramatic vision, a theme for dialectical insight and laughter; and to decipher that theme, that vision, and that music was my only possible life.19 It is my clear hope that we shall all enjoy deciphering those themes, visions, and music during our stay here in Ávila. 19 Ibid.

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Festive Celebration of Life as One of Santayana’s Prime Values

A Comment on Morris Grossman’s Presentation of Santayana’s Ultimate

1 Ultimate1 Morris Grossman’s comment that Santayana’s “realms provide us not with ultimate religion but with ultimate art” singularly captures Santayana’s sense of religion, art, and the ultimate. For Santayana, there are no grand ultimates, whether religion, art, or any other matter. All is contingent and relative. Even as early as 1887 (when Santayana was twenty-​three and recently had received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard) Santayana writes to Henry Ward Abbot: For if our ultimate end must be worth choosing, it must have a further standard by which we can measure its worth, that is, it must not be ultimate. Ultimate objects are facts needing no justification: if you try to justify them you are in a position of the Indian who made the earth rest on the elephant, or of the European who made it hang on God. The latter had the disadvantage, by the way, of not knowing about the tortoise. The confusion in all these cases arises from the attempt to apply to the whole what by its nature applies only to the part—​rationality, worth, damned foolishness, weight, and causality, being all relations between parts, which the whole cannot have simply because it is not a part of something bigger, nor a means to any other ulterior object.2 The whole natural world is neutral in terms of value, but parts of the natural world, including the human animal, provide value and art. It is this moral and spiritual aspect of life that makes life worth living, and it is the art of shaping one’s actions according one’s natural values that determines one’s moral 1 This piece is a critical commentary on a short essay by Morris Grossman, “George Santayana (1863–​1952): Material Universe Making Specific and Limited Things Possible, the Realm of Spirit Included.” Both appeared initially in Ultimate Reality and Meaning, vol. 16 1–​2 (March-​ June 1993), and were reprinted in American Philosophers’ Ideas of Ultimate Reality and Meaning, eds. A.J. Reck, T. Horvath, T. Krettek, and S. Grean (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1994). 2 17 February 1887. Ms. In Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_009

84 Chapter 7 and spiritual success in life. The festive celebration of life is one of Santayana’s prime values, a value he sadly saw missing in much of American life. In writing about Bertrand Russell to his nephew George Sturgis: Long ago I wrote you some philosophical reflections on the absurdity of living well on invisible property: but you said I must have been talking with Bertrand Russell—​I don’t think I had, at least on that subject: I am not a modern or liberal socialist; but I feel in my very bones that our form of industrial society is very precarious, and that it will disappear, perhaps rather soon, as completely as the mediaeval or the Graeco-​Roman civilisations have disappeared. I went the other day to Pompei, where there is a well-​preserved house now to be seen. It made me wish I had lived 2000 years ago: it was so beautiful and so very intimate: all the sources, and all the ultimate objects, of life were then close at hand, visible, and obvious. Shouldn’t it always be so? We live lost in a spider’s web of machinery, material and social, and don’t know what we are living for or how we manage to live at all. Your prophetic uncle George.3 2

Spinoza

Come back to a morning in 1940 or 1941. Imagine Santayana in his late seventies and early seventies composing his autobiography. He relies on his remarkably lucid memory, some miscellaneous notes, and four autobiographical notebooks drafted over several years. He is writing about Spinoza who was his master and model concerning the natural basis of morality, but Santayana questions Spinoza’s humane sense of the good. He does not think Spinoza appreciates “all the types of excellence toward which life may be directed.”4 Hoping to discard any ambiguity about his estimation of Spinoza, Santayana writes in his fine, clear hand “…I will take this opportunity, since I  may not have any other, of clearing my conscience of ambiguity in that respect.”5 But even this opportunity was denied Santayana. This assessment of Spinoza saw its first light of publication with the new critical edition of Santayana’s autobiography. The passage ends as follows: “The saint and the poet are hardly sane or authoritative unless they embody a wide tradition. If they are rebels, disinherited and solitary, the world may admire but cannot follow them. They have 3 4 October 1931. Ms. In Houghton Library, Harvard University. 4 George Santayana, Persons and Places (Cambridge: mit Press, 1986), 235. 5 Ibid.

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studied human nature by looking at the stars.”6 The significance of this passage is not only textual, but also philosophically substantive. Santayana provides the marginal heading for this section “Inadequacy of Spinoza in ethics.”7 He begins by noting that he regards “Spinoza as the only modern philosopher in the line of orthodox physics.”8 Hence, Spinoza’s materialism is that which begins in Thales and culminates for the Greeks in Democritus. And Santayana notes: “Perhaps the chief source of my enthusiasm for him has been the magnificent clearness of his orthodoxy on this point.”9 However, it is the grafting onto natural philosophy that Santayana finds inadequate in Spinoza: Morality is something relative: not that its precepts in any case optional are arbitrary; for each man they are defined by his innate character and possible forms of happiness and action. His momentary passions or judgments are partial expressions of his nature, but not adequate or infallible; and ignorance of the circumstances may mislead in practice, as ignorance of self may mislead in desire. But this fixed good is relative to each species and each individual; so that in considering the moral ideal of any philosopher, two questions arise. First, does he, like Spinoza, understand the natural basis of morality, or is he confused and superstitious on the subject? Second, how humane and representative is his sense for the good, and how far, by his disposition or sympathetic intelligence, does he appreciate all the types of excellence toward which life may be directed?10 Santayana’s fundamental point is that one must be both a complete naturalist and a humanist. Spinoza was foremost a naturalist, but he was not a complete humanist: He had no idea of human greatness and no sympathy with human sorrow. His notion of the soul was too plebian and too quietistic. He was a Jew not of Exodus or Kings but of Amsterdam. He was too Dutch, too much the merchant and artisan, with nothing of the soldier, the poet, the prince, or the lover. Had he ever read Plutarch? Could he have relished 6 7 8 9 10

Ibid., 235–​36. Ibid., 234. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 234–​35.

86 Chapter 7 Shakespeare or Racine? Could Virgil or Dante mean anything to him? Now such limitations, deep as they run, do not at all annul the nobility of Spinoza’s simple and brave life, devoted to sublime speculation; yet they the authority of judgment in moral matters. He was virtuous but not normal. He had found his vocation, which it was his right and duty to follow; a high but very special vocation, that made him a model neither for mankind at large nor for man in his wholeness. He was a genius; but as a guide in the spiritual life, he was narrow and inadequate.11 3

Reason

It is this wide tradition that places reason as one among several adaptive features of life to changing material conditions—​an adaptive feature that has not priority, natural or moral, over any other. And the test of which will simply be survival on the natural level, and festivity and delight on the spiritual and moral level. 4

Complete Naturalist and a Complete Humanist

How might one capture Santayana’s sense of the complete person, a full naturalist and humanist? Morris Grossman’s final words do this admirably well: “Surely Santayana creates and envisions his scheme in the matter of any other great artist who addresses ultimate issues, issues (might we say) that matter. His works has all the seriousness, passion, dedication and purpose of religious art, but presented with human modesty, and detached and disinfected of all dogma and theological conceit.”12 11 Ibid., 235. 12 Morris Grossman, “George Santayana (1863–​1952):  Material Universe Making Specific and Limited Things Possible, the Realm of the Spirit Included,” in American Philosophers’ Ideas of Ultimate Reality and Meaning, eds. A.J. Reck, T. Horvath, T. Krettek, and S. Grean (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 156.

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“Introduction” to the Birth of Reason and Other Essays Daniel Cory, Santayana’s close associate and literary secretary from 1927 to 1952, first published The Birth of Reason essays in 1968, five years following the hundredth anniversary of Santayana’s birth. The essays make noteworthy contributions to Santayana’s thought, reaffirming positions he previously developed and advancing his line of inquiry and discussion in many areas. Santayana’s insights into history, politics, religion, science, philosophy, and everyday life are not outdated. Although many of the essays were never refined for publication, they reveal Santayana’s remarkable skill with the English language, all the more surprising since English was his second language. His style of writing is appealing to educated readers, who are attracted by his penetrating historical and cultural analyses, quick turn of phrase, perceptive account of complex issues, and sage advice. Santayana’s philosophical and cultural concerns are ahead of their time. He does not employ the methods of many contemporary philosophers, particularly those with a strong bent toward logic or linguistics. Instead, his discussions converge on current issues concerning foundationalism, belief claims, scientific and religious knowledge, and aesthetics. Recognizing Santayana’s achievements, Arthur Danto in 1963 called for a revival of Santayana studies, noting that many philosophers are recapitulating “the intellectual crisis which Santayana helped overcome,” breaking through “to a view of things not dissimilar to the one he [Santayana] achieved.”1 In 1985 Hilary Putnam echoed Danto’s remarks: “If there has been less attention paid to Santayana’s philosophy than to that of Royce or Peirce, this is in large part because his philosophical mood and philosophical intuitions were actually ahead of his time. In many ways he anticipated some of the dominant trends of American philosophy of the present day.”2 The reissue of the essays of The Birth of Reason is a step in the revitalization of Santayana studies that recently has witnessed an increase in publications on Santayana’s life and philosophy, an international society dedicated to the 1 Arthur Danto, “Santayana and the Task Ahead,” Nation, December 21, 1963: 437–​40. 2 Quoted in “Santayana Restored,” a brochure for the Works of George Santayana (Cambridge: mit Press, 1985).

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_010

88 Chapter 8 study of Santayana’s works,3 and the funding of a critical edition of his complete literary and philosophical corpus.4 1

Santayana’s Life

Dramatic episodes and reflective insights silhouette Santayana’s life and philosophy. Migration, separation from parents, life in an alien culture, academic partisan heat, and two world wars are prominent contours of his philosophical and literary achievements. In them Santayana’s presence is that of a savant: wise to hidden events, honest in his views of others and of himself, and able to craft an artful, admirable life encircled by unyielding public and private constraints. His philosophical foundations are his naturalism and the Socratic ideal of self-​knowledge. As a naturalist, Santayana maintains that all explanations of events are rooted in the physical world, but what populates the conscious world of human beings is not reducible merely to the physical. Human values, ideals and ideas are not material, nor are they subject to scientific investigation. They are the aesthetic qualities of human existence that make life worthwhile, festive, and dramatic. The principal challenge of human life is to know and accept one’s natural heritage and environment while crafting a life of value. This is an invitation, not to any supernatural task or world, but to the art of living in everyday human life. The quotidian activities of ordinary existence generate value, beauty, and the good. The perspectives of acceptance and celebration are reflected in his life and writings, and they distinctively mark Santayana as a major literary and philosophical figure of the twentieth century. In the opening essay of this volume, “The Philosophy of Travel,” Santayana says: “The most radical form of travel, and the most tragic, is migration.”5 This comment is revealing since migration characterizes much of Santayana’s life, leading one biographer to label him the “vagabond scholar.”6 His fellow 3 The Santayana Society, Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station, tx 77843-​4237. 4 The Works of George Santayana, a twenty-​volume critical edition being published by mit Press and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Volumes published to date: Persons and Places (1986), The Sense of Beauty (1988), Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1989), and The Last Puritan (1994). 5 George Santayana, The Birth of Reason & Other Essays, ed. Daniel Cory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 10. 6 See Bruno Lind, Vagabond Scholar: A Venture into the Privacy of George Santayana (New York: Bridgehead Books, 1962).

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countryman, Pablo Picasso, considered the vagabond performing artist as the poetic embodiment of alienated creative genius and spiritual grace.7 Such characteristics are apt for Santayana’s migratory spirit, but he found migration not merely alienating; it was heroic and stimulating: “In travel, as in being born, interest may drown the discomfort of finding oneself in a foreign medium: the solitude and liberty of the wide world may prove more stimulating than chilling. Yet migration like birth is heroic:  the soul is signing away her safety for a blank cheque.”8 Santayana’s heroic blank check began in Madrid, Spain, where he was born in 1863. His childhood was fated by the Spanish diplomatic backgrounds of his parents and by the distant relations between them. He was the only child of his father but the sixth of his mother, who previously had been married to an American businessman. Both parents were world travelers, familiar with cultural and political differences and with the accidental features that cause human life to flourish and diminish. His father, Agustín Santayana, was well educated, trained as an artist, and served the Spanish government as a diplomat until his early retirement due to ill health resulting from his service in the Philippines.9 His mother’s father was also a Spanish diplomat who, due to the ironic contingencies of politics, once served as the American ambassador to Spain. He died as the Spanish governor of a small Philippine island, leaving his daughter, Josefina, on her own. To provide for herself, she established a successful export business. In time, the new Spanish governor, Agustín, arrived. For uncertain reasons, Josefina moved to Manila, met the Bostonian businessman George Sturgis, and married. There were five Sturgis children, three of whom survived infancy. She was left on her own in the Philippines again when her first husband died, but this time she moved to Boston, largely supported by a gift from her husband’s brother. The support was necessary since George Sturgis’s business ventures had had limited success. Years later, on a chance holiday in Spain, Josefina and Agustín were reunited. They married, and Jorge Agustín Nicolás Santayana was born in 1863. Susan Sturgis, Santayana’s half-​ sister, insisted on the name “Jorge” and that he be called “George” after her father.10

7 8 9 10

In particular, this aspect of Picasso’s painting is found during his Rose Period (1904–​06) with depictions of circus performers and saltimbanques. George Santayana, The Birth of Reason & Other Essays, 10–​11. Very close to Santayana’s age on retirement from Harvard in 1912. Ironically, Susan Sturgis, whom Santayana called by her Spanish name “Susana,” would later be known generally by her Spanish name when she moved to Spain and married.

90 Chapter 8 Josefina left Spain when George Santayana was nearly seven, upholding a promise to her first husband to educate the Sturgis children in Boston. Realizing that his son’s opportunities were better in America, Agustín moved to Boston with George two years later (1872), but Agustín never adapted to the puritanical, New England culture nor to the Boston climate. After several months he returned to Ávila where he maintained a lifelong correspondence with his son,11 whom he would see again in 1884, when Santayana was a Harvard undergraduate, and then yearly until Agustín’s death in 1893. Santayana’s life has three phases: his early years in Spain, forty years in the United States, and forty years of retirement in Europe and England. Gifted and intelligent, he found his student years at Harvard filled with frolic, poetry, and philosophy. He was torn between his allegiances to America and to Spain and Europe. As a professor, increasingly he came to view the American culture as youthful and energetic but shrouded by an anti-​intellectual appetite for the production of goods without concern for the quality of life. Harvard, the foremost American academic center, was seen as “taken in” by the promise of progress based on economic gains when, according to Santayana, one needed a central focus on the knowledge and understanding requisite for living well. He found being a professor was too consumed with administrative concerns and academic quibbles, making it difficult to be a full-​time writer and scholar. Although his professorship began in 1889, this sense of the nonscholarly and limited nature of the professorate induced him in the mid-​1890s to begin planning an early retirement from Harvard. In a letter to a friend in 1892, Santayana expressed the hope that his academic life would be “resolutely unconventional” and noted that he could only be a professor per accidens, saying that “I would rather beg than be one essentially.”12 Santayana’s unique position at Harvard is highlighted in two of his poetic social criticisms of the American role in the Spanish-​American War (“Uncle Sammy’s Wild Oats” and “Spain in America”). In 1893 Santayana underwent a change of heart, a metanoia, as he called it. Gradually he altered his mode of living to one more conducive to writing and scholarship. His circle of friends was closer but not as broad, and the regular habits of writing and travel that characterize his later life had their beginnings in these Harvard years. Three events preceded his metanoia: the unexpected death of a young student, witnessing his father’s death, and the marriage of his half-​sister Susana. 11 12

Agustín Santayana’s correspondence with his son is located in the George Santayana Papers, Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. The Letters of George Santayana, Book One, [1868–​1909], William G. Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2001), 120.

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Santayana’s reflections on these events led to an acceptance of the tragic predicament of life and its imaginative release: Cultivate imagination, love it, give it endless forms, but do not let it deceive you. Enjoy the world, travel over it, and learn its ways, but do not let it hold you….To possess things and persons in idea is the only pure good to be got out of them; to possess them physically or legally is a burden and a snare.13 For Santayana, this conclusion was liberating; it was the ancient wisdom that acceptance of the tragic leads to a lyrical release. His naturalism with its lyrical cry of human imagination sets him apart from his colleagues in the Harvard philosophy department. It is rooted in Aristotle and Spinoza and has its contemporary influences in James’s pragmatism and Royce’s idealism. But Santayana’s focus on and celebration of creative imagination in all human endeavors is one of his distinctive contributions to American thought. This focus, along with his Spanish heritage, Catholic upbringing, and European suspicion of American industry, set him apart in the Harvard Yard. Several scholars conclude that Santayana was also distinctively homosexual, another characteristic that would set him apart from the standard lifestyles of the Harvard community. The evidence for this is mixed and is drawn largely from allusions in Santayana’s early poetry14 and supported by the known homosexual and bisexual orientation of several of Santayana’s friends and associates. Santayana never married, and he provides no clear indication of his sexual preferences. Attraction both to women and to men seems evident in his early correspondence. The one documented comment about his homosexuality occurred when he was sixty-​five. Following a discussion of A.E. Housman’s poetry and homosexuality, Santayana remarked, “I think I must have been that way in my Harvard days although I was unconscious of it at the time.”15 Whether homosexual or not, it is clear that Santayana’s closest associates were male, not an unusual feature of the all-​male university community. If he were a practicing homosexual from his student days on, his life is even more distinctive than 13 14 15

George Santayana, Persons and Places:  Fragments of Autobiography (Cambridge:  mit Press, 1986), 427–​28. See John McCormick, George Santayana:  A Biography (New  York:  Alfred A.  Knopf, 1987), 40. Daniel Cory, Santayana: The Later Years, A Portrait with Letters (New York: George Braziller, 1963), 40.

92 Chapter 8 previously recognized. And if he was a latent homosexual throughout his life, then the cultural and social constraints of public life clearly shape his friendships and career. Although never officially an American (he retained his Spanish citizenship throughout his life), he is associated with the development of Classical American philosophy along with Peirce, James, Royce, and Dewey. He was widely recognized as a philosopher, poet, critic of culture and literature, and dramatist, making him one of the major literati of the time. When he formally announced his retirement in 1911, he had an established international reputation. His first philosophical book, The Sense of Beauty (1896), remains to this day an important volume for aesthetics. Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900) was followed by the five books of The Life of Reason (1905–​06), which established Santayana as a major philosophical figure. Although Santayana’s pending retirement had been known for some time, Harvard’s president Lowell asked him to reconsider and, recognizing Santayana’s penchant for Europe, made arrangements to rotate his teaching between the Sorbonne and Harvard. Santayana agreed temporarily to this arrangement, but in 1912, after setting in order family matters, he left Harvard and America never to return. His mother, who apparently had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died shortly after he left the United States, leaving him an inheritance, which furthered his chances of travel and retirement without significant financial concerns. All financial arrangements he turned over to his half-​brother, requesting only that he be provided enough to support a modest life, and he pledged that his Sturgis relations would inherit the bulk of his estate. Santayana arranged for his friend Bertrand Russell to take his place at Harvard for the first year. Apparently Harvard hoped to replace Santayana with Russell, but the Harvard atmosphere was equally unappealing to “Bertie.” Free from academia, financial concerns, and American entanglements, he spent the remainder of his life, some of his most productive years, in London, Cambridge, Paris, the Riviera, Madrid, Ávila, Florence, Cortina d’Ampezzo, and Rome. Offers of distinguished chairs followed him throughout his retirement, but he remained steadfast in his commitment to full-​time writing rather than the businesslike professorate. He wrote philosophical works such as Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923), Platonism and the Spiritual Life (1927), and the four books of The Realms of Being (1927, 1930, 1938, 1940), but he became widely known for his cultural and literary criticisms in Winds of Doctrine (1913), Egotism in German Philosophy (1926), and The Idea of Christ in the Gospels (1946). Two of his works brought international fame. His novel, The Last Puritan (1936), and his autobiography Persons and Places (1944), were best-​selling books in the United

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States as selections of the Book-​of-​the-​Month Club, and he is one of the few philosophers to appear on the cover of Time (February 3, 1936). Although elderly and not in good health, Santayana attempted to leave Rome for Switzerland before World War ii. After a long journey he was stopped at the border and turned back because of insufficient papers. His was a complicated case: a Spanish citizen residing in Rome with most of his financial ties in the United States and England. On October 14, 1941, he entered the Clinica della Piccola Compagna di Maria, a hospital clinic run by a Catholic order of nuns, where he lived until his death on September 26, 1952. Since he was not Catholic and did not convert, in spite of some efforts by the nuns and others at the clinic, Santayana asked not to be buried in the consecrated ground of the Roman cemetery. Daniel Cory discovered that the unconsecrated ground was reserved for criminals and the poor. The Spanish government had the final say, dedicating to Santayana its Panteón de la Obra Pía Española in Rome’s Campo Verano Cemetery and burying him there with a special stone and a large inscription drawn from The Idea of Christ in the Gospels. Cory read lines from Santayana’s “The Poet’s Testament,” a poem affirming his naturalistic outlook: I give back to the earth what the earth gave, All to the furrow, nothing to grave. The candles out, the spirit’s vigil spent; Sight may not follow where the vision went.16 2

Fin de Siècle Hispanic-​American

The character of Santayana’s life and writings sets him apart and makes the essays in The Birth of Reason important as we turn to a new century and a new millennium. Historically the fin de siècle calls to question the foundations of society, science, art, and culture. Santayana, as a turn-​of-​the-​century figure, carefully examines the basic structures of society and of individual life. Some of the themes of his essays reflect his view that American society and culture are undergoing significant changes. His only novel, The Last Puritan, gives a literary character to the historical changes occurring during the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. For Santayana, this was a transition from a Great Merchant Society to a more democratic and commercial one, a

16 William G.  Holzberger, ed. The Complete Poems of George Santayana (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1979), 268.

94 Chapter 8 change that made travel and commodities more widely available than at any previous time. It was the finale for a particular class and their ethos, the last of the puritans, and the opening curtain for a new generation owing less to their predecessors, harboring more hope for their future, and recognizing a larger world community. His view of the celebratory European, free to enjoy life, and the obligated American, bound by habit and activity, carries considerable weight as we turn to the twenty-​first century. Much can be learned from Santayana’s Hispanic heritage, shaded by his sense of being an outsider in America. His writings capture the apprehension and concern that is apparent as contemporary Americans find their milieu fragmented and the historic role of their economic enterprise and government in question. Santayana’s philosophical outlook and publications are not dated by either century, nor do they reflect parochial American or European views. He sees classical philosophical questions arising in each century and in each country. He warns against the age-​old demons of ideology and public opinion, counsels for a clear understanding of our biological and social histories, and maintains with Socrates that self-​knowledge is the birth of reason. Found in The Birth of Reason are the following: Public opinion is like the wind; it becomes at times a formidable force; something a man finds himself borne along by or fighting against; yet in itself it is invisible, rises suddenly in gusts and squalls, and mysteriously disappears;17…the ideas and the shouts of the public play a thin and inconstant treble18….Events flow from causes extraordinarily complex, geographical, biological, psychic and economic; whereas political ideologies represent irresponsible prophecies, or social rivalries and resentments, blind to everything but themselves.19 With festive Spanish irony he refuses to yield to fashion and the march of progress. He wrestles with philosophical and literary questions through classical terms and phrases, providing his own elegance of style and withdrawing from absolute standards imposed on him or by him. Santayana is known as a genius for epigrams, and some of his witty assertions are a part of our cultural expressions regularly finding their way into news broadcasts, political speeches, and even fund-​raising campaigns and cartoons. Among the most famous is his remark about those who cannot remember 17 George Santayana, The Birth of Reason & Other Essays, 101. 18 Ibid., 107. 19 Ibid., 162–​63.

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history. Within the essays of this book there are many others less widely known but worthy of consideration: The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who do not understand it.20 Certainly official minds are not fountains of originality.21 Fortunately on earth nothing lasts for ever.22 … philosophers, like fish, move often in schools, and each sect is bitterly exclusive.23 Kindness, as the name implies, has its roots in the family.24 Friendship belongs to life in the open.25 … true classicism is the understanding that life is an art within natural limits.26 There would be less faction and ill-​will in the world if people could distinguish their preferences from their information.27 Disinterested insight is permitted to any fish in any river, provided he can get his nose out of the water.28 Santayana’s political outlook is decidedly conservative, although he flirted with a variety of socialisms, particularly those with a materialistic bent. In brief, he believed that freedom is the result of order (natural order), not order the result of freedom: “Freedom is the result of perfect organization. The problem is so to organise ourselves as to become free.”29 This conservatism, 20 Ibid., 98. 21 Ibid., 113. 22 Ibid., 115. 23 Ibid., 129. 24 Ibid., 87. 25 Ibid., 79. 26 Ibid., 27. 27 Ibid., 159. 28 Ibid., 110. 29 Ibid., 85.

96 Chapter 8 his Spanish heritage, and his forced residence in Rome during World war ii mistakenly led some to consider him a fascist with sympathies aligned with Mussolini and Hitler. It is now clear that he distinguished himself from these political figures and from the form of National Socialism that evolved in Germany and Italy, although he initially found the new organization and productivity of Italy under Mussolini promising, as he did the socialistic developments in Russia. In 1934 the editor of The Saturday Review of Literature, Henry Seidel Canby, asked Santayana for an essay on fascism. Daniel Cory explains that Santayana “was not especially interested in a local regimen in Italy, but in the wider political questions that he later treated in his book on Dominations and Powers.”30 In the resulting essay, “Alternatives to Liberalism,” Santayana notes the surprise of the liberals at the rise of Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler. But he sees their rise as a natural result of the sway of public opinion and the pressing need for order. However, the end of the essay serves as a prophecy to the short-​lived aspirations of political Titans. He notes the importance of not introducing lies “in the state catechism.”31 The best government “would think on the human scale, loving the beauty of the individual. If their ordinances were sometimes severe under stress of necessity, that severity would be rational, or at least amenable to reason. In such a case, holding truth by the hand, authority might become gentle and even holy.”32 But the contemporary scene is different: Now, on the contrary, we sometimes see the legislator posing as a Titan. Perhaps he has got wind of a proud philosophy that makes the will absolute in a nation or in mankind, recognizing no divine hindrance in circumstances or in the private recesses of the heart. Destiny is expected to march according to plan. No science, virtue, or religion is admitted beyond the prescriptions of the state. Every natural whim is sacred, every national ambition legitimate. Here is certainly an intoxicating adventure; but I am afraid a city so founded, if it could stand, would turn out to be the iron city of Dis. These heroes would have entrenched themselves in hell, in scorn of their own nature; and they would reason to pine for the liberal chaos from which their Satanic system had saved them. Fortunately on earth nothing lasts for ever; yet a continual revulsion from tyranny to anarchy, and back again, is a disheartening process.33 30 Ibid., 108n. 31 Ibid., 113. 32 Ibid., 114–​15. 33 Ibid., 115.

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Santayana’s approach to public discontent and social challenges is both individualistic and naturalistic; for some critics, it is too much of both. Santayana counsels self-​knowledge, leading to a cultivation of the art of individualistic living. But Santayana never suggests only one model for human life, and he was careful to avoid suggesting that his life should serve as a model. For him, life was “more speculative, freer, juster, and …happier,” but “not better,”34 since he accepted no absolute standards. His motto might read:  Each individual to his or her own devices but with cultivation, wisdom, and habits of the past (the individuals’ particular past) informing and structuring actions. His guidance is wise. For organizing and altering political and institutional structures, Santayana’s individualistic model may seem inadequate. But for many persons, finding a clear vision of one’s own good, pursuing it, and cultivating a life around that perspective, may be the key to surviving and living with dignity in complex and demanding social structures. The alternative, which sounds quite up-​to-​date, is far less appealing: “But when society is deeply troubled, when men do not know what to do, what to think, what to enjoy, or how to avoid hateful compulsions, then every complaint and every panacea gathers adherents, parties arise, and ideologies fill the atmosphere with their quarrels.”35 Santayana’s political aim is to respect all nationalities and governments for their native intelligence and origin, while remaining true to one’s heritage without binding one’s perspective to any regional outlook. Santayana’s boyhood town of Ávila, Spain, provides a picturesque model for his native intelligence. Looking through the narrow portals in Ávila’s memorable wall, a person’s horizons open to a larger world even while being secure within the medieval town. Open to the world but true to one’s natural self, this was Santayana’s guide throughout his life. This cicerone led him to be a harbinger of important intellectual turns on both sides of the Atlantic: his naturalism, his view of philosophy as literature, his insistence that the nonreligious spiritual life is of major importance in a businesslike and quantitative world, his characterization of the celebration of the good life in a world community, his institutional pragmatism, and his explorations of the practical links binding private and public well-​being.

34 35

George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, 539. George Santayana, The Birth of Reason & Other Essays, 107.

98 Chapter 8 3

The Pursuit of Wisdom: Festive Naturalism

Throughout his long life (1863–​1952) Santayana pursued the ancient Greek wisdom of self-​knowledge. This pursuit led, for Santayana, to the recognition and acceptance of human action as constrained and contoured by material forces shaping one’s own constitution and the environment. Human life is not unique; it is another instance of animal life and is as subject to investigation and scientific explanation as any animal life may be. This naturalistic philosophy is a common sense view of the human animal in a natural environment: humans find themselves in a particular environment with a specific makeup and heritage not of their choosing, and the task of life is to live well within these circumstances. The circumstances determine whether one may live well or not, and, as such, all is fated. But the inchoate determinants of human life may give birth to reason and to spirit. Both these outgrowths of natural circumstances provide dramatic qualities to human existence that liberate it spiritually, not materially, from its tragic predicament. The birth of reason, generated by the harmony in one’s material predicaments, may be followed by the birth of consciousness, or spirit. Spirit is not limited to the undramatic, uncaring, material conditions of one’s own being, society, and species. Human consciousness may survey a limitless range of possibilities not existent, not requisite for action, not necessary for survival, but delightful, festive, and eternal. The joint births of reason and spirit make life worthwhile, giving dramatic, festive characteristics to the undramatic and fated world. 4

The Birth of Reason

In the essay “The Birth of Reason,” Santayana writes of the fatal predicament of human life and the mental remove requisite for festive liberation. “The world my host and myself a guest”;36 and this truth is tragic for human beings. Ongoing, uncaring, material forces host all events, including human actions. This host is “flowing at its own meandering paces through an endless variety of forms.”37 The guest is created and fated by the physical predicament of heritage and environment, but the spirit of human life longs for freedom, for liberation, for life beyond its caged entanglements. This longing generates false beliefs, the most prominent being absolute freedom. 36 Ibid., 52. 37 Ibid., 58.

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Belief in absolute freedom is self-​destructive. It leads to hatred of one’s own being and fosters self-​deception. The nightmare of absolute freedom stirs with the realization that one’s first free choice would limit, load, and poison one’s whole future. This first choice, small as may be, “makes me therefore a created, fated, hypnotized thing compelled to hate my own being.”38 Abandoning the belief in absolute freedom and accepting one’s fated predicament may lead to disinterested pessimism, a pessimism not of gloom but of imaginative and speculative festivity. Santayana writes: “Being in the dumps may enable a man to shake off conventional hypocrisies and to become an impartial sympathizer with all oppressed races and with the inalienable right of every crying child to cry loudly; but only when speculation has lifted a man from the dumps will he become a disinterested pessimist, like my first guides in free thought, Lucretius, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer.”39 Spirit, Santayana’s term for consciousness or awareness, arises when the physical elements of the world unknowingly attain harmony. Spirit is “precisely the voice of order in nature, the music, as full of light as of motion, of joy as of peace, that comes with an even partial and momentary perfection in some vital rhythm.”40 Such harmony is temporary, and the disorganized natural forces permit spirit to arise “only spasmodically, to suffer. And to fail. For just as the birth of spirit is joyous, because some nascent harmony evokes it, so the rending or smothering of that harmony, if not sudden, imposes useless struggles and suffering.”41 The insecure equilibrium of the natural world must be recognized and accepted before one can celebrate the birth of reason and spirit in the natural world. Such a celebration leads to the delight of imagination and artistry, and to the acceptance of the insecure circumstances of one’s liberation. The instability of the physical world makes the celebration all the more significant, makes one’s mental remove from fate all the more vital and rich. The importance of the essays in the Birth of Reason is highlighted by the advanced wisdom of Santayana’s reflections. At a few points, his sagacity is distanced and narrowed by his heritage, education, and temperament as in some of his remarks about Judaism and John Dewey. But even then, he is open to correction and imaginative play. In many ways, his perspectives were far ahead of their time, and they deserve reconsideration and respect. Santayana was a naturalist before naturalism grew popular. 38 Ibid., 55. 39 Ibid., 39. 40 Ibid., 53. 41 Ibid., 53.

­c hapter 9

Santayana: Hispanic-​American, Cosmopolitan Philosopher, and World-​Citizen George Santayana is well known as a founder of classical American philosophy, but he was never a citizen of the United States. It is ironic that he attained prominent status as an American philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic while always retaining his official Spanish citizenship. The influence of his Spanish heritage on his vida y milagros1 (life and works) along with his cosmopolitan orientation, which situate him as a genuine “world citizen,” are the topics of this paper. Henry James (after reading Interpretations of Poetry and Religion) reportedly said that he would walk miles through a snowstorm to meet Santayana.2 Edmund Wilson found Santayana “the most international—​or, better, the most super-​national” mind and personality he had known: “The intelligence that has persisted in him has been that of the civilized human race.”3 During World War ii and following his death in Rome in 1952, his influence and reputation waned. In 1954 Morris R.  Cohen, an eminent philosopher at City College of New York, called attention to the sad “systematic neglect” of Santayana, and, during the centennial celebrations of Santayana’s birth, Arthur Danto invited others to join in the revival of the study of Santayana. He noted that many philosophers are recapitulating “the intellectual crisis which Santayana helped overcome,” breaking through “to a view of things not dissimilar to the one [Santayana] achieved.”4 Such a view is later echoed by Hilary Putnam: “Santayana was a towering figure in the great period of American philosophy. If there has been less attention paid to Santayana’s philosophy than to that of Royce or Peirce, this is in large part because his philosophical mood and philosophical intuitions were actually ahead of his time. In many ways,

1 This Spanish expression was used in earlier times to refer to a saint’s “life and miracles,” but it is now commonly used to refer, somewhat humorously, to one’s “life and works.” 2 John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 235. 3 Edmund Wilson, Europe Without Baedeker: Sketches Among the Ruins of Italy, Greece, and England (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1947), 51 and 63. 4 Arthur Danto, “Santayana and the Task Ahead,” The Nation (21 December, 1963), 439.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_011

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he anticipated some of the dominant trends of American philosophy of the present period.”5 Because of his prominence in American thought, Santayana concluded that his literary corpus should be evaluated as that of an American author.6 But as significant as his contributions are to American philosophy, few of his contemporaries realized he was not officially a citizen of the United States. He preserved his Spanish citizenship throughout his long life as a matter of pride and honesty. In a letter written to Frederick Champion Ward on 26 January 1935, Santayana writes: Another point. In my novel there is hardly a word about Spain:  but if I ever write the autobiography I have in mind, Spain will come into its own in my life. It has always been a fundamental fact. That I have always retained my legal Spanish nationality has not been an accident or an affectation: it has been a symbol of the truth. Until the recent death of my sisters (who had returned to Spain) I  went almost every year to Avila, living en famille there. It was only officially, on my literary side, that Spain counted for so little.7 Earlier, on 16 December 1926,8 had written to Lewis Mumford: “Your appreciation seems absolutely just, as directed upon that semi-​public personage: but I never felt myself to be identical with that being, and now much less than ever. What you say, about my roots being at best in Mrs. Gardner’s Boston, is true of him, not of me: my own roots are Catholic and Spanish, and though they remain under ground, perhaps, they are the life of everything:  for instance, of my pose as a superior and lackadaisical person; because all the people and opinions which I deal with, and try to understand, are foreign and heretical and transitory from the point of view of the great tradition, to which I belong.”9 5 Hilary Putnam, Santayana Restored (Cambridge: The mit Press, 1985). This is a brochure for the critical edition of Persons and Places. 6 In a letter to Cyril C. Clemens on 12 November 1948, Santayana writes: “I am not, as is often supposed, an American citizen, yet cannot be classed as a Spanish author, since I write only in English.” The Letters of George Santayana, Book Eight, 1948–​1952, ed. William G. Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2008), 118. 7 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 1933–​1936, ed. William G. Holzberger, 174. 8 Santayana’s birthday. 9 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Three, 1921–​1927, ed. William G.  Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2002), 310. Mumford’s The Golden Day (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926) praises Santayana’s The Life of Reason.

102 Chapter 9 Hence, in many ways Santayana is the prominent Hispanic-​American philosopher of the classical American period. As a resident alien Santayana represents the perspective of a deeply involved outsider. He was both a part of and apart from the American intellectual and cultural scene—​shaping and informing American perspectives as well as having his education and outlook fashioned by the American ethic. He described himself as a traveler, a philosopher on holiday actively participating and enjoying the foreign culture but who also sees it as one among many, delighting in the differences.10 Santayana was dubbed the “smiling philosopher,” and “laughing philosopher,”11 and his life and thought reflect the festive position of being a vacationer in another culture, and many of his insights into American culture are rooted in this ironic distant but deep involvement and in his Spanish pedigree.12 John McCormick writes: Some philosophers can bring a smile, William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein among them. Some, like Nietzsche, terrify, although not for the reasons he thought he was terrifying. Only Santayana can make us laugh aloud. Insofar as a biographer can determine, he was a happy man, and his happiness was contagious.13 In his autobiography, Persons and Places, Santayana writes of perfect friendship as having two prerequisites: a “capacity to worship and capacity to laugh. They were the two windows through which the mind took flight and morally escaped from this world.”14 Santayana’s smile on America was both one of humor and one of concern. The current apprehension over the factionalized and fragmented American milieux is evident in the earliest of Santayana’s works and increased when he

10 11 12

13 14

See “Philosophy of Travel,” in The Birth of Reason, ed. Daniel Cory (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968), 5–​12. See Horace M. Kallen, “The Laughing Philosopher,” vol. 1, no. 1 (January 2, 1964), 19–​35. In the United States Santayana was the visitor, the Spaniard on holiday. But in Spain he was viewed as too American. In fact, during the fascist regime of Franco, Santayana was forbidden to be read or published in Spain because he was considered an American who abandoned Spain and, worse, was an atheist. Only after the Franco period were Santayana’s works readily accessible in Spain. There are wonderful stories of scholars going to the backrooms of bookstores, being given a chapter of one of Santayana’s books to read and to return to the store when finished, then to get another chapter torn from the book. John McCormick, George Santayana, xiv. George Santayana, Persons and Places (Cambridge: The mit Press, 1986), 351.

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left America for Europe. He optimistically writes of his adopted country as a youthful civilization that spreads its wild oats like an adolescent and who will someday mature and be more statesmanlike with a rich tradition. But, in the latter part of his life, Santayana was less optimistic about the future of the country he left in 1912, seeing it as extending its youthful enthusiasm in willful domination and business enterprise without the wisdom of age. These two perspectives are ably crafted in his Berkeley lecture, “The Genteel Tradition of American Philosophy,” and in his novel, The Last Puritan. At Berkeley he declared the “American Will inhabits the sky-​scraper; the American intellect inhabits the colonial mansion.”15 European transcendentalism and Calvinism are the American intellectual traditions, but they no longer suit the American drive for success in industry, business, and football. Hence, the youthful willfulness of the country has outrun the old wits, but there remains a chance for wisdom and energy to be coupled in a future coherent and rich tradition. In his novel, the European outlook is represented by Mario Van de Weyer, a carefree, naturally gifted and likeable young man who by American standards appears too focused on the peripheral aspects of life: travel, opera, love affairs, and architecture. And the American perspective is embodied in the tragic hero, Oliver Alden, who is the last puritan. He does what is right, based on his duties to his family, school, and friends. Life is a slow, powerful flow of tasks and responsibilities. He is intelligent and knows there is more than obligation, and he senses his guilt at not being able to achieve the natural abundant life, but knowing this only nourishes his puritanism and causes him to feel guilty about feeling guilty. In a charming scene Oliver introduces Mario to Professor Santayana at Harvard. Oliver is a dedicated student and football player, thoroughly a first-​rate American taking matters seriously and doing his best. After only a short visit with the professor, Mario, it is decided by Santayana, does not need to take a course from the professor. Mario already has the natural, instinctual approach of a cultivated person. Oliver, on the other hand, knows he must work hard to achieve his goal, which will be only a succession of goals, and ends tragically. For Santayana, the basic rigidity of the American lifestyle was evident at the start of his career. He began planning his early retirement from Harvard in the mid-​1890s. He thought the American university was becoming too businesslike, too occupied with vocation and training to nourish curiosity and creativity, and too rigidly occupied with tasks, schedules, and doing good to permit

15

George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” in The Works of George Santayana, Triton Edition, vol. vii (New York: Scribner’s 1937), 129.

104 Chapter 9 faculty or students to pursue genuine inquiry and education. He thought American academics largely were involved in partisan heat over false issues rather than the pursuit of knowledge, and his refusal to attend faculty meetings, serve on committees, or to provide enterprising service to the university did not go well with the administrative authorities at Harvard (at least not until he became a celebrated American intellectual figure at the turn of the century). One wonders what he would say of our current academic institutions. In his last years at Harvard, his mother was dying, probably suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She was in the care of his half-​sister Josephine, and Santayana visited her daily, normally in the early evenings. He carefully arranged for Josephine to go to Spain following their mother’s slow death, and on 23 January 1912 set sail for Europe and Spain. Earlier he had written to Susana, who was already in Spain: “I am very sick of America and of professors and professoresses, and that I  am pining for a sunny, quiet, remote, friendly, intellectual, obscure existence, with large horizons and no empty noise in the foreground.”16 That many scholars were and are unaware of Santayana’s Spanish heritage and citizenship was a feature he wrestled with throughout his life, explaining to publishers, Pulitzer Prize nominators, authors, lawyers, and friends that he was officially and naturally Spanish. One friend, Arthur Davison Ficke, mistakenly mentioned Santayana’s “half-​Spanish” blood in a book, which invoked a quick response. Santayana noted his birth in Madrid, his mother’s dutiful move to Boston which fulfilled a promise to her first husband (an American) to educate their children there, and his eventual move to Boston with his father. His father lived in Boston for approximately six months, but he returned to Ávila because of his dissatisfaction with the American environment (natural and cultural) and his inability to speak English. Santayana affirms his full Spanish heritage on both parental sides and writes of his Boston life:  “Still, our family life in Boston was wholly Spanish: I never spoke any other language at home: and you can’t imagine what a completely false picture comes to the mind if you suggest that my mother was an American. Then, too, she and my sisters would have been Protestants, and my whole imaginative and moral background would have been different.”17 Santayana’s Spanish heritage not only shaped his outlook on American culture, but it also formed the roots of much of his imaginative philosophy. In exploring the nature of Santayana’s philosophy as Hispanic, one should begin 16 17

The Letters of George Santayana, Book Two, 1910–​ 1920, ed. William G.  Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2002), 62–​63. The Letters of George Santayana, Book Six, 1937–​1940, 296–​97.

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with the clear recognition that Santayana was a Spaniard living for forty years on American soil without abandoning his heritage. Many of the delights and disappointments of Santayana’s American stay stem from this circumstance. Raised in the Spanish Catholic tradition, he lived in puritanical New England. Valuing art, literature, poetry, and music for their beauty and relevance to the quality of life, he lived among practitioners of usefulness for whom aesthetics was ancillary to the ongoing rush of quotidian life. Assessing religion as an enormous poetic achievement to be celebrated, he realized that the dominant Protestant realism forced religion into the mode of a science, and industry, and a humanistic mission. For Santayana, education and learning were natural and something to delight in, not preparation for employment. Life, at its best, was festive and celebrated, not a series of tasks needing completion for the betterment of mankind or the world. He understood and wrote that science and genuine human knowledge must proceed in pragmatic fashion because of the limitations of human knowledge, but he knew that such an obvious methodology does not mean that pragmatism is the foundation of living well. With these views, Santayana was clearly a foreign figure in the industrious Harvard Yard where the enterprise of preparing men for business and governmental leadership was the central aim and where the rich doctrine of pragmatism suited that aim and the growing industrial and military presence of the United States on the international scene. As John McCormick says in his biography, he was “a ripe mango among Jonathan apples.”18 For all his difference, Santayana also made a difference. His philosophy presents a remarkable synthesis of European and American thought. Many of his novel insights spring from his Spanish background. He was a materialist before materialism grew popular; he appreciated multiple perfections before multiculturalism became an issue; and he managed to naturalize Platonism, update Aristotle, fight off idealisms, and provide a striking and sensitive account of the spiritual life. These philosophical insights are founded in his naturalism which embodies many Spanish elements including the emphasis on individualism, fate, celebration of living, humor, and respect for religious traditions. 1

Santayana’s Hispanic Individualism

Individualism is the topic of a popular Spanish saying that characterizes other nationalities as gnats, always moving in groups and blown by the wind, but 18

John McCormick, George Santayana, 32.

106 Chapter 9 Spaniards are like flies, each individual and alone. Santayana expresses similar views in his letters, as when he writes to Peter Russell about G.S. Frazer’s News from South America:  “The South and certainly the North American is full of his own possible and actual achievements, overestimating the cosmic importance of both; whereas in the fixity of his personal allegiances and sense of honour, excluding the fundamental compromise, the Spanish mind, in both hemispheres, is less subject than the Anglosaxon to the sense that he ought to swim with the stream.”19 Santayana’s almost radical individualism is an essential aspect of his naturalism. His early account of aesthetics and his later analysis of political structures illustrate his fundamental reliance on individual perspectives. In The Sense of Beauty Santayana describes the experience of beauty as the satisfaction of individual desires. If beauty is the fulfillment of a subset of desires, then science may investigate and discover the physiological and environmental structures causing humans and other animals to have the experience. Aesthetics, like any other human or animal activity, is subject to investigation and practical knowledge. However, the experienced qualities of being beautiful are projections of individual persons and are not subject to empirical investigation because they are individual in origin and character. In his mature philosophy, Santayana refers to these qualities as essences, each individual and universal without existing in time or space. The foundation of all value, aesthetics and moral, is the individual that projects values on a world that is natural, valueless, and uncaring. Only individuals with physiological drives and needs project their values on the world. Hence if social life does not enhance individual life, particularly solitude and creativity, then this confusion between means and ends makes social life empty and oppressive. Santayana’s individualism made it difficult for American pragmatists to understand, not to mention sympathize with, his political views. Santayana’s naturalism led him to careful considerations of socialism and Marxism, but his yardstick for any political structure was the extent to which it fostered and respected individual creativity and values. The twin fears of private anarchy and public uniformity are the basis for Santayana’s criticisms of democracy, which he saw as potentially crushing individuality because of the insistence on conformity. Dewey, Kallen, Lamont, and others found Santayana’s inattentiveness to social inequality unacceptable. And Santayana found his American critics unable to understand their situatedness in the American enterprise. One of his former students, Arthur Jacob Goldsmith, wrote to Santayana asking that 19

The Letters of George Santayana, Book Eight, 1948–​1952, 193.

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he join a society called Americans United for World Government. Santayana responded: Naturally I recognize the good intentions of your movement, but it is not one in which I can take part personally, first because I am not legally an American, and then because it does not seem to me that your methods are applicable to any society beyond the Anglo-​Saxon area. Discussion does not lead to agreement but to the discovery of disagreements that perhaps were unsuspected, latent, and harmless. No form of government can be final, or the “right” form for ever and for everybody. I think it possible that in the organization of industry the near future may make great progress, and that wars in the service of trade may be prevented for ages. But the pressure of population always returns, the world is already well-​ peopled, and nobody knows what solutions or what an equilibrium may impose themselves on future generations. Meanwhile, we can refine our own lives at home, according to our several traditions.20 If one believes that basic social inequalities can be corrected through changing political structures, then Santayana’s inattentiveness to social inequality is inadequate. His views become more understandable in the context of his naturalism where the final cause is the “authority of things.” Our fated circumstances of living in an ongoing material world where values and goals are fundamentally individual, means for Santayana that the social focus must always be the individual. He holds that suffering is the worst feature of human life, not social inequality. Hence, social action is not his first clarion call for political structures, rather the painful and oppressive plight of individuals in particular circumstances is. Holding that all institutions, including governments, are inextricably rooted in their culture and background make it understandable that he would not readily see how particular views of social inequality can be transferred readily from one culture to another. His “Latin” perspective raised suspicion toward forcing Anglo-​Saxon economic and political outlooks on other cultures. His personal charity was to individuals when support clearly was needed and clearly aided. He supported students, artists, and poets who needed funds for travel or other expenses. He provided financial and personal assistance to many members of his extended Spanish family, and to numerous friends, often of quite different philosophical, literary, and political persuasions than his own. He, for 20

The Letters of George Santayana, Book Seven, 1941–​1947, 301.

108 Chapter 9 example, provided Bertrand Russell (a person whose philosophical and political views hardly paralleled his) significant funds when Russell was in difficult financial circumstances and unable to find a teaching post in England or the United States. He first provided these funds anonymously, fearing that Russell would be embarrassed by his circumstances and need for support, but, when it became evident that Russell actually had been the source of the request through Lady Ottoline Morrell, the anonymity was dropped. He was suspicious of all high-​minded social movements, but individual bravery was highly regarded by Santayana as when he praised the nuns in his resident hospital-​clinic for concealing a British colonel who had escaped from an Italian prison.21 Solving regional, national, or global social problems seems unlikely within Santayana’s individualistic model, and he was less than confident that genuine solutions are possible by reorganizing political and institutional structures, particularly within a democratic structure. But for many persons, finding a clear vision of one’s own good, pursuing it, and cultivating a life around that perspective, may be the key to surviving and living with dignity in complex and demanding social structures. This is Santayana’s central principle. The alternative is confusion and mass movements fostered by slogans and lack of knowledge: “But when society is deeply troubled, when men do not know what to do, what to think, what to enjoy, or how to avoid hateful compulsions, then every complaint and every panacea gathers adherents, parties arise, and ideologies fill the atmosphere with their quarrels.”22 1.1 Santayana’s Sense of Humor Irony is a strong element in Spanish humor, and it is central to understanding Santayana. Clearly there is much irony in his life: he is one of the founders of American philosophy but never an American; he promotes high regard for religion but is an atheist; he notes that aesthetics and values are useless but sees that as enhancing their importance; he is known for his systematic approach to philosophy but claims there is no metaphysics in his work; he is a voice for solitude and individual values but is a naturalist expounding the commonality of our material and physiological bases; he is a learned scholar and professor who sees scholarship and academia as centers for economic prosperity and domination rather than education.

21 22

John McCormick, George Santayana, 429. George Santayana, “On Public Opinion,” in The Birth of Reason & Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 107.

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Irony finds its way into his everyday humor, which was immense and illustrated well throughout his letters and recorded comments.23 Even some of his most rigorous philosophical endeavors are best understood through his Spanish smile. He delighted in frustrating his contemporaries by using old-​ fashioned terms to develop his philosophy:  essence, spirit, psyche, trope, to name a few. He would note these ancient traditions were richer in meaning and closer to the natural base of human life than the contemporary terms in vogue: sense data, consciousness or mind, behavioral patterns, etc. The introduction to his mature philosophy, Scepticism and Animal Faith, is structured in irony. Santayana is an antifoundationist who maintains there are no certain rational foundations for any knowledge claims. But he structures the volume as if it were a pursuit of absolute certain knowledge, mimicking Descartes’s approach in his Meditations. Not only that, but he finds that which cannot be doubted. By discounting conventional and rational beliefs (following the footsteps of Hume and others), he finally discovers that in the “solipsism of the present moment” whatever is known must be known with certainty, but ironically it cannot be spoken or even thought. Speech and thought both occur in time, and time permits error to occur and doubt to prevail. With his smile, he then begins to reconstruct human beliefs on the nonrational assumptions inherent in animal action, exactly the point that is central to his work. Unless one has the sense of the Spanish smiling philosopher enjoying himself and your reactions, the central thrust and enjoyment of his work can be missed. He even begins the book by saying: Here is one more system of philosophy. If the reader is tempted to smile, I can assure him that I smile with him, and that my system—​to which this volume is a critical introduction—​differs widely in spirit and pretensions from what usually goes by that name. In the first place, my system is not mine, nor new. I am merely attempting to express for the reader the principles to which he appeals when he smiles.24 23

24

On 22 October 1950 Santayana writes to Bruno Lind: “And didn’t Charles v say Latin was best for addressing God, Spanish for men, Italian for diplomats, French for women and German—​for his horse:  but I  should have preferred to say for Protestant Hymns and the pastorals of Walter von der Vogelweide.” George Santayana, The Letters of George Santayana, Book Eight, 1948–​1952, 298. [Bruno Lind is the pen name of Robert C. Hahnel, a Harvard graduate who describes his meetings and conversations with Santayana in Vagabond Scholar: A Venture into the Privacy of George Santayana (New York: Bridgehead Books, 1962). Vogelweide is a medieval German poet. George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), v.

110 Chapter 9 2

Cosmopolitanism

In the United States, our last two presidential elections (2012 and 2016) have been, to many, more partisan than previous elections and, perhaps, more important. Their long-​term importance is open to debate, but they do appear to be two of the most fractious, ideologically conflicted, and controversial elections in the last hundred years. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents have brought forward ideological claims with varying perspectives on public responsibility, the acknowledgement of precedential ways and behaviors of governing, the capitalistic market, health care, education, and the disadvantaged and poor. If one happens to be a citizen of the United States, one has heard many claims about the facts and circumstances, and many claims seem shaped by an ideological focus portraying opponents as unwilling to listen to reason or face reality. From a distance, it appears that much the same is taking places in other parts of the world, and with horrendous outcomes. Philosophers have long been good at analyzing arguments, deciphering the foundational claims of positions, attempting to make clear where arguments are weak or ill-​founded and sorting through the implications of positions held. However, regardless of our clarity and precision, as philosophers and citizens we face a more difficult set of circumstances, calling for much more than analysis and clarity. The “more” is difficult to define, but it may be captured in Rodney King’s comment during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, “Can We All Just Get Along?”25 Clarity of positions does not necessarily resolve conflict; indeed, clarity of positions can set in stone one’s perspective leading to a rigidity that makes living in a diverse community difficult. Clarity of one’s position has often been used as the basis for significant conflict and the justification for horrendous actions against fellow human beings. Can we all get along? Perhaps not. History appears to be on the side of a negative response. But our future depends on taking positive steps to move forward and learn how to get along in a global world. Citizenship in a particular country is a foundation of one’s identity and cultural heritage, but few of us can remain anchored only in the concerns of our own country. The twenty-​first century’s interconnectedness of humans (internet, electronic communication, business, governments, education, language, etc.) makes it increasingly difficult to maintain a parochial perspective on issues of major concern to human beings throughout the world. 25

url: http://​youtube.com/​watch?v=1sONfxPCTU0.

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Can we all get  along? Again, the answer is “perhaps not.” Like Santayana and others such as his onetime student W.E.B. Du Bois,26 I  do not believe there is any inevitability that understanding leads to compassion or that particular economic or political developments lead to progress in human compatibility, compassion, or concern. Our inevitable evolution and development do not guarantee progress; it only assures that we will adapt to changing circumstances for as long as homo sapiens exist. So, efforts to get along may be useless given our natures and our differing cultural and environmental circumstances. Even if useless, we have a choice to try. If we are fortunate, wise, and work diligently, perhaps we can create a world in which we do get along, if not in minute detail, then in the larger issues affecting human life worldwide. The concern I am raising is not a new one. It has been a part of our philosophical and human enterprise from the beginning. But our global interconnectedness is new and increases the need for addressing the issue. 2.1 Cosmopolitanism: The Challenge 2.1.1 Central Tenets Cosmopolitanism is a view that maintains two ideals:  universal concern for all humans and respect for legitimate differences. These are values and do not have the form of consistent, rational principles as may be found in utilitarianism, deontology, and other philosophical approaches. Culturally, moral agreements and disagreements are more often based on accepted views and values and not on rational principles. One’s accepted values may even clash with one another rather than being consistent. As Appiah puts it: “As we’ll see there will be times when these two ideals—​universal concern and respect for legitimate difference—​clash. There’s a sense in which cosmopolitanism is the name not of the solution but of the challenge.”27 The challenge of cosmopolitanism is how do we respect differences and find ways of living together even when there may be little or no agreements regarding important social issues. This challenge has a long intellectual history. In what follows, I hope to provide a brief account of some of the major figures in the history of cosmopolitanism.

26 27

Shamoon Zamir, Dark Voices: Dark Voices: W.E.B. Du Bois and American Thought, 1888–​1903 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 160–​61. Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), xv.

112 Chapter 9 2.1.2 History of Cosmopolitanism Diogenes of Sinope (c. 404–​323 bce) is considered the founder of cosmopolitanism. When asked where he came from, he would answer: I am a citizen of the world.28 For the time, this appears to have been an almost revolutionary approach in a period when one’s identity was bound to a city-​state or the Hellenes as a society. Later the Stoics would advance this concept that humans reside in two communities: the one of our birth and the larger community of human argument and aspiration.29 Like concentric circles, individual humans find themselves located at the center of an expanding society that includes the self, immediate family, extended family, local groups, state and national groups, and humanity. Modern cosmopolitans include Immanuel Kant, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Kant’s approach in Perpetual Peace (1795) focuses on the principle of universal hospitality. Protecting people from war was Kant’s central tenet, and his focus was on what belongs to the human race in common that would “finally bring the human race ever closer to a cosmopolitan constitution.”30 Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida focus on everyday lives rather than on codes or laws. Levinas concenters our obligations to the Other, noting the lack of universal moral law while emphasizing our sense of responsibility that the face of the Other brings forth, even compels. This sense is not one of moral principles but of values such as charity, mercy, goodness. Derrida in an interview summarized cosmopolitanism as follows: There is a tradition of cosmopolitanism…which comes to us from, on one hand, Greek thought with the Stoics, who have a concept of the citizen of the world. You also have St. Paul in the Christian tradition, also a certain call for a citizen of the world as, precisely, a brother. St. Paul says that we are all brothers, that is sons of God, so we are not foreigners, we belong to the world as citizens of the world; and it is in this tradition that we could follow up until Kant for instance, in whose concept of cosmopolitanism we find the conditions for hospitality. But in the concept of the cosmopolitical in Kant there are a number of conditions: first of all you should 28 29 30

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), 65. Martha Craven Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” The Journal of Philosophy, no.5 (1997): 1–​25. Immanuel Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace,” in Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 329.

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of course welcome the stranger, the foreigner, to the extent that he is a citizen of another country, that you gran him the right to visit and not to stay, and there are a number of other conditions that I can’t summarise here quickly, but this concept of the cosmopolitical which is very novel, very worthy of respect (and I think cosmopolitanism is a very good thing) is a very good concept.31 2.1.3 Kwame Anthony Appiah Perhaps the best-​known contemporary cosmopolitan is Kwame Anthony Appiah. His international background enables him to honor his own heritage while maintaining that there are pressing moral standards that may guide citizens of different countries and backgrounds. 2.1.3.1 Appiah and the Universal Concern and Responsibility for Others Like others, Appiah notes both the intellectual and historical background for cosmopolitanism. Intellectually, it is connectivity and community between peoples that is a basis for the recognition of responsibilities for others and respect for our differences. But to what extent are we responsible for others in a global community? Appiah maintains that the “very idea of morality” is that you have responsibilities for each person “you know about and can effect.”32 Our present interconnectedness makes us responsible for many more people than ever before. We have grown from living in social groups and now find ourselves in a “global tribe.”33 Historically, the cosmopolitan ethic echoes on forms of Stoicism and in Abrahamic religions:  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”34 Appiah notes that cosmopolitanism was significant in the Enlightenment through the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” (1789) and in Kant’s proposal for a league of nations.35 Of course, such views also can be contrasted with historical alternative. Hitler and Stalin in their murderous regimes attacked “rootless cosmopolitans,” not only as a weasel word for anti-​Semitism but as a clear threat to their regimes.36 31 Geoffrey Bennington, Politics and Friendship:  A Discussion with Jacques Derrida (Sussex: Center for Modern French Thought, 1997). http;//​livingphilosophy.org/​Derrida-​ politics-​friendship.htm. 32 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, xiii. 33 Ibid. 34 Galatians 3:28, King James Version. 35 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, xiv. 36 Ibid., xvi.

114 Chapter 9 2.1.3.2 Appiah and the Role of Values Appiah notes that having concern and responsibilities for all those we know and may affect is a large order. It is not immediately clear how such concerns and responsibilities radiate out from self, family, friends, communities, states, nations, and globally. Values seem so different, so local, so thickly immersed in cultures. Cosmopolitans wish to acknowledge such differences but to also maintain they have been exaggerated:  “The foreignness of foreigners, the strangeness of strangers: these things are real enough. It’s just that we’ve been encouraged, not least by well-​meaning intellectuals, to exaggerate their significance by an order of magnitude.”37 Indeed, cosmopolitans maintain that there are some values that are universal, particularly the value of getting along.38 With the world soon growing to nine billion people, finding common ground is not just important but essential for our future. Of course, many values are local and must remain so because their meaning is interwoven in local cultures. Even so, there is a growing sense of internationalism, or at the very least, interconnectedness. 2.1.3.3 Appiah and the Respect for Differences and Living Together Commonality in human diversity is the foundation for our ability to get along with each other. Indeed, differences can be known only in the midst of great commonality, and respect for differences is based on shared characteristics. Our shared traits and habits enable us to learn from and respect differences. Ethnographers and anthropologists often focus on differences, yet as Appiah notes: So, naturally, the ethnographer didn’t usually come back with a report whose one-​sentence summary was: they are pretty much like us. And yet, of course, they had to be. They did, after all, mostly have gods, food, language, dance, music, carving, medicines, family lives, rituals, jokes, and children’s tales. They smiled, slept, had sex and children, wept, and, in the end, died. And it was possible for this total stranger, the anthropologist, who was, nevertheless, a fellow human being, to make progress with their language and religion, their habits—​things that every adult member of the society had had a couple of decades to work one—​in a year or two. Without those similarities, how could cultural anthropology be possible?39 37 Ibid., xxi. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., 14.

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Through communication, often storytelling, we gain a better sense of another person, another culture. How we respond to the world and to each other, to problems and puzzles, is one way of aligning our responses to issues. And as Appiah states: “And that alignment of responses is, in turn, one of the ways we maintain the social fabric, the texture of our relationships.”40 Art and literature reveal responses to the world, and they both challenge and shape our responses, perhaps enabling us to be more open to values beyond those we have accepted. Art and literature represent areas of great international interests and move us beyond our more parochial outlooks. They span borders and regions through a concerted focus on the commonality of the human condition, although expressed in a local or national context. In Rome, Michelangelo and Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican express far more than one religious perspective, far more than was the outcome of papal revenue and expenses. They are in many ways contributions to the world.41 Other people, other cultures reveal themselves through fiction and nonfiction, music, painting, sculpture and dance. But what happens when there is a dramatically different response to the world? Appiah provides two examples of radically different responses to the world, one that is demonstrably false and the other simply a different way of organizing family life. The examples are drawn from his kinsmen in Ghana. The first involves belief in witchcraft and the other is the Akan idea of the abusua where family relationships depend on whom your mother is. Regarding witchcraft, given that many of Appiah’s kinsmen grew up in a community that believed in witchcraft, and their experiences were shaped and interpreted within the context of that belief, it is reasonable that they should believe in witchcraft. However, medical and experimental sciences show such beliefs to be false. Hence, in a complex world of different cultures, beliefs, and concepts, one may understand how individuals and cultures came to hold certain views, but there remains the concept of truth and the possibility that such views are false.42 Even so, one can live together when someone holds a view that is false, indeed, one can live together among many family and extended relations where there may be clearly false views. It is respect for the differences that make the difference. The Akan idea of abusua is different from the traditional Western view. Abusua membership depends only on whom your mother is. This leads to a strikingly different structure of families, not one that is true or false, but 40 Ibid., 29. 41 Ibid., 21–​22. 42 Ibid., 22.

116 Chapter 9 only one that establishes different relationships and responsibilities than the Western approach where family membership except for one’s paternal name is often divided between maternal and paternal relations. For example, Appiah writes: “So I am in the same abusua as my sister’s children but not in the same as my brother’s children. And, since I am not related to my father through a woman, he is not a member of my abusua either.”43 There are, in short, different ways of organizing family life. It is the culture that determines the organizational principles, and it is difficult to say that one could be considered correct or not, except in the context of a particular culture. Good parenting is considered a value in both the abusua and in Western views, but family arrangements are thickly enmeshed with the local culture, customs, and expectations. Taking into account the interests of others is consistent with the Golden Rule. However, following such a rule is not easy or simple, and imagination plays a significant role. Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), tells his daughter Scout that “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,”44 and at the end of the novel Scout says she is grateful to her father for letting her know that “you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.”45 Imagination and empathy are important ingredients in this account. 2.1.3.4 Appiah and Why We Can Agree to Live Together Without Agreeing Why One difficult question is what happens when one takes into account the interests of others and there still remains significant disagreement? Appiah notes that sympathy and understanding do not always lead to agreement, and he summarizes responses to such disagreement: First, we can agree about what to do even when we don’t agree why. Second, we exaggerate the role of reasoned argument in reaching or failing to reach agreements about values. And third, most conflicts don’t arise from warring values in the first place.46 One of Appiah’s principal claims is that we can agree on living together without agreeing why. We may have differing judgments and reasons for living 43 Ibid., 48. 44 Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 33. 45 Ibid., 321. 46 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 67.

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together without agreeing on the values that make it good to live together.47 Sociologists normally do not begin with an examination of reasons as to why people disagree, although philosophers often do. For the most part, Appiah claims we rarely make judgments based on carefully elucidated principles applied to particular circumstances and facts. Rather we should “recognize this simple fact: a large part of what we do we do because it is just what we do.”48 Appiah stresses: “And a good deal of what we intuitively take to be right, we take to be right just because it is what we are used to.”49 Over the years, we have become used to a more diverse society in the United States. I grew up in the southern part of the United States where integration, open housing, public access to accommodations and restaurants led many southerners and particularly their children to grow accustomed to having racial diversity as a part of everyday life. There are few Lester Maddoxes standing with an ax handle and Bible defending a right not to serve African-​Americans. Such actions not only would be illegal now, but generally would be considered simply wrong and sad. Much the same appears to be happening with a national openness to gays. What many considered simply a wrong set of relationships is now more and more accepted in the United States. We seem to have turned from a moral account of private acts to a public acceptance of gays throughout our public life, even recently in the National Football League (nfl). Is there full acceptance of these views? No. But there is a clear trend moving in one direction with some noted stragglers. The principal point is that we can live together, even in harmony, without agreeing on the underlying principles of our values, except the cosmopolitan universal value of living together.50 Understanding one another and living together does not require agreeing with each other. Conversation is not so much an effort to persuade as it is an effort to understand and to learn from others: “Often enough, as Faust said, in the beginning is the deed: practices and not principles are what enable us to live together in peace.”51 And I stress the role of the imagination here because the encounters, properly conducted, are valuable in themselves: “Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another.”52 47 See ibid., 69–​71. 48 Ibid., 73. 49 Ibid., 72. 50 Ibid., 78. 51 Ibid., 85. 52 Ibid.

118 Chapter 9 2.1.3.5 Appiah and Community and Commonality Returning to the theme of commonality, it is our commonality that enables us to understand and respect each other. Such commonality is found in our social structures as well as in our biology, in our memes as well as in our genes. Here Appiah and Santayana begin crossing similar paths. As Appiah claims: Finally, there’s just a great deal of everyday life that is utterly, humanly familiar. People in Ghana, people everywhere, buy and sell, eat, read the papers, watch movies, sleep, go to church or mosque, laugh, marry, make love, commit adultery, go to funerals, die. Most of the time, once someone has translated the language you don’t know, or explained some little unfamiliar symbol or custom, you’ll have no more (and, of course, no less) trouble understanding why they do what they do than you do making sense of your neighbors back home.53 Of course, there are those who cannot live with others. Socially, culturally, and biologically they focus on conflict, harm, and destruction. Psychopaths are unlikely prospects for having a sense of responsibility for others or for respecting differences. And, of course, there are many variations of human kinds along the scale of responsibility and respect. One model used by Appiah is color language. The vast majority of humans see colors:  red, green, yellow, and blue. But there are those who are color deficient or born congenitally blind. And there are tetrachromats who see far more colors than normal. Musicians and mathematicians appear to have abilities that are not widespread, not common to most humans. Most humans are kind, most sympathize with one another, most recognize a responsibility for others, but then there are the sociopaths and the psychopaths. There are statistical norms in society as in our norm for seeing colors.54 These norms provide a basis for commonality, communication, and living together. These norms have their basis in our biology and cultures. If someone came from a strikingly different culture and biology, we may not be able to understand them at all. Appiah quotes: “If a lion could speak, we couldn’t understand him.”55 Our shared nature allows us to communicate with each other and to share a sense of each other’s perspective.

53 Ibid., 94. 54 Ibid., 95. 55 Ibid., 97.

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Part of the reason for this is that, in culture as in biology, our human environment presents similar problems; and societies, like natural selection, often settle on the same solution because it is the best available. Donald Brown, in his book Human Universals, has a fascinating chapter called “The Universal People,” which describes many of the traits we humans share.56 As with all scholarship, it contains claims that other serious scholars would deny. It is hard, though, to resist the evidence that, starting with our common biology and the shared problems of the human situation (and granted that we may also share cultural traits because of our common origins), human societies have ended up having many deep things in common. Among them are practices like music, poetry, dance, marriage, funerals; values resembling courtesy, hospitality, sexual modesty, generosity, reciprocity, the resolution of social conflict; concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, parent and child, past, present, and future.57 The specific habits and customs we have in common do not need to be universal; they only need to be what particular people have in common in order for communication and understanding to occur.58 In today’s world, most of us already live a cosmopolitan life with influences that are global: art, literature, politics, film and lifestyles from many parts of the world. If there ever was a monochrome culture without other influences, that seems rare if not impossible today. As Appiah asserts: “Cultural purity is an oxymoron.”59 Much of Appiah’s work focuses on the questions of what we owe others, noting this is not a search for philosophical principles but a search for common responses to each other and to cultures, to habits of action that respect differences while preserving one’s own integrity. He reflects on our obligations through discussions of the Monterrey Consensus60 and Peter Singer’s case of a child drowning in a shallow pond.61 Without going into the details of Appiah’s account of what we owe others, it is enough to say that Santayana’s approach to cosmopolitanism has a different emphasis. Santayana begins his account with respect for differences and the integrity of the individual. Cultures and differences are based on their embodiments in individual integrity for Santayana. 56 Ibid., 96. 57 Ibid., 97. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., 113. 60 Ibid., 173. 61 Ibid., 158.

120 Chapter 9 2.1.4 Santayana and the Diverse Forms of the Good Santayana’s cosmopolitanism does not begin with universal claims but rather with a moral relativism that highlights respect for differences. To the extent that there are claims that are universal, for Santayana, they are embedded in our psyche, our physical makeup with its genetic and meme tropes. His account of respect for differences begins with his view that the “forms of the good are divergent, and that each is definite and final.”62 Each individual deserves respect, no matter how different they are from the norm. The principle task is to overcome “moral and ideal provinciality, and to see that every form of life had its own perfection, which it was stupid and cruel to condemn for differing from some other form, by chance one’s own.”63 Santayana’s moral relativism is consistent with his non-​reductive naturalism and is one of the grounds for his cosmopolitanism. From Santayana’s perspective, every individual has personal integrity that is rooted in the individual’s specific personal and cultural outlooks embodied in the natural structures of one’s physiology and of one’s physical culture. A neutral perspective of a naturalistic observer, if it were possible, would permit one to observe the behavior of others and value that behavior merely for what it is, not because it coincides with one’s own interests but because the naturalistic observer understands the natural and neutral basis for action and thought. This perspective is comprehensively discussed in Thomas Nagel’s The View from Nowhere, where unfortunately there is not a single reference to Santayana. No doubt this insight was influenced by the diplomatic careers and lifestyles of his parents, their distant and respectful marriage, the experiences of the young Santayana in Miss Welchman’s Kindergarten on Chestnut Street and in the Boston Latin School, the wanderings and deliberations of the traveling student, the personal and professional experiences of the young Harvard professor, and the success and travels of the mature, distinguished writer. It is clear that being Spanish, having a Catholic background, and perhaps being a “unconscious homosexual” set him apart in Protestant America.64 He nevertheless participated in and valued the American experience though he could never fully identify with it. Later, he chose Hermes the Interpreter as his model,65 paralleling his mature insight as 62

These words are a part of a marginal heading, or as Santayana called them, a “marginal note,” found throughout Persons and Places. These are short introductions to each paragraph. Santayana, Persons and Places, 170. 63 Ibid. 64 Daniel Cory, Santayana, The Later Years:  A Portrait with Letters (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 40. 65 George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 259–​64.

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interpreter of views and values. Hermes is at home in the world of discourse—​ unraveling, decoding, and interpreting one perspective for another. Likewise, Santayana and Appiah approach philosophy as reflective discourse, understanding and interpreting many perspectives in their own dialect. While philosophical discourse is Santayana’s manner of approaching major issues, his materialistic or naturalistic approach to animal action provides the substantive basis for his understanding of human behavior. Materialism provides the naturalistic basis for understanding and explaining morality. However, it is the chaotic realm of essence that provides unlimited forms for imagination and interpretation. Santayana’s naturalism projects a neutral, objective view towards moralities, that is, towards the vested interests of animals. His realm of essence, likewise, is neutral to the realization or status of any possible form. The realm of essence consists of all possible conceptions without an overarching order or ordinality: “Any special system has alternatives, and must tremble for its frontiers; whereas the realm of essence, in its perfect catholicity, is placid and safe and the same whatever may happen in earth or heaven.”66 Santayana’s insight that the forms of the good are divergent reveals a chaotic realm of possible goods not logically or morally ordered by animal interests or talents. However, an absolutely neutral perspective is not possible. Perspectives derive from some living being in a particular place and time with latent interests originating from their physiology and physical environment. Santayana’s naturalism is balanced by a polarity between the neutral, objective understanding of behavior and activity on the one hand and the committed vested interest of the living being on the other hand. One may recognize that every form of the good has its own perfection, and one may respect that perfection, but “the right of alien natures to pursue their proper aims can never abolish our right to pursue ours.”67 2.1.5

Santayana and Integrity: Each Form of the Good Is Definite and Final Integral to Santayana’s cosmopolitanism is his respect for the multiplicity of human (and animal) interests suited not only for survival but for living well in one’s lifetime. As Santayana has noted:  “Survival is something impossible: but it is possible to have lived and died well.”68 Living and dying well are not abstract values that are the same for all, but rather they are rooted in one’s 66 67 68

George Santayana, Realms of Being (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), 82. George Santayana, Persons and Places, 170. George Santayana, Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 210.

122 Chapter 9 heritable traits, physiological development, and culture. They are reflected in speech, literature, art and the whole of individual human lives. However presented, they are reflections of individual physiology rooted in diverse human and animal cultures. Santayana’s philosophy rests on his materialism and on his humane and sympathetic appreciation for the excellence of each life. But from the perspective of autobiography, Santayana’s clear notion of self-​knowledge, in the sense of the Greeks, is his most distinguishing work. For Santayana, “integrity or self-​definition is and remains first and fundamental in morals.”69 Like his naturalism and his realm of essence, this insight establishes his thought in a wide tradition, and it marks his career and his personal life with distinction. Decided elements of his self-​definition are found in his retirement from Harvard and his life as a roving scholar. After Harvard, his daily activities and long-​term achievements were matters of his own direction. Free to choose his own environment and habitual practices, his life was festive and fruitful. Santayana was true to his own form of life to the end. Two days before his death Cory asked him if was suffering:  “Yes, my friend. But my anguish is entirely physical; there are no moral difficulties whatsoever.”70 2.1.6 Santayana and Spiritual Life For Santayana, spiritual life was integral to living well, but his notion of spiritual life is not what one may normally consider. Spirituality is temporary, fleeting, and not a way of living. It is not an influence that structures one’s existence, but it is rather a reflection in consciousness of the quality of one’s existence. If the spiritual life was considered a dominating or guiding influence in structuring one’s life, the way Santayana views reason, then one would be forced to choose between the life of reason and the life of the spirit as a monk or nun, much as these individuals are forced to choose between the life of the world and that of the religious order. But for Santayana, no such conflict exists; spirituality is not choosing a way of living over an extended period of time. Indeed, any effort to choose such a life would be short-​lived, since the spiritual life is a life of receptivity to all that comes in the moment while suspending animal interests. Suspending one’s specific natural interests, such as eating and sleeping, for any extended period would be both detrimental and tragic. Consciousness essentially is only awareness, an attention to what is given, rather than being an instrument in reshaping the world. Consciousness,

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George Santayana, Persons and Places, 170. Daniel Cory, Santayana: The Later Years, 325.

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emerging late in the evolutionary pathway, is a flowering of happy circumstances that celebrates what is given, and when truly recognized, does only that. It is joyful, delighting in what is presented, and not troubled by where it leads or what it means. The more dower, moralistic, and evangelical aspects of religion he saw as confused efforts to make religion a science, a social club, or a political movement. Spirit, or consciousness, is momentary, fleeting, and depends on the physical forces of our bodies and environment in order to exist. Shaping one’s life to enhance these spiritual, fleeting moments, extending them as long as is practical, is one of the delights of living for some people, but it is certainly not a goal for all, nor should it be. 2.1.7 Santayana vs. Appiah Like Appiah, an enduring value of Santayana’s work lies in the questions raised and in the ones he left for our intellectual pursuits. Both Santayana and Appiah leave us with challenges and unanswered questions. Here are three that I find merit further thought. First, How do we make a chorus out of individual voices? It is not clear that Santayana’s individualism and conservative politics match the conditions of modern society. Perhaps for one living in a global society, pursuing actions that are worthwhile and that enable the individual to flourish may foster the individual virtue that Santayana sought. But how does one approach social and physical inequities if one looks primarily to individual circumstances and if one’s moral consciousness only points to individuals as the locus of moral actions? Social structures and genetic inequalities appear to have considerable bearing on the success of individuals and on whether societies flourish or decline. The twin fears of private anarchy and public uniformity appear to be real in American society and our global community today as they were when Santayana launched his criticism, coupled with his early concern of American imperialism. But is a moral compass that points only to individual action and responsibilities sufficient in the face of global and genetic issues that cross individual and national boundaries? Perhaps Appiah’s concern for others bridges community and the individual, even as our communities grow dramatically in our interdependence. Second, for Santayana, spiritual life was integral to living well, but his notion of spiritual life is not what one may normally consider. Spirituality is temporary, fleeting, and not a way of living. It is not an influence that structures one’s existence, but it is rather a reflection in consciousness of the quality of one’s existence. And third, a continuing perplexity in animal life is the role of consciousness. The seeming immediacy and transparency of awareness now appears

124 Chapter 9 more complex and physically based. Recent research on the physicality of consciousness and biochemical nature calls into question the immediacy of consciousness and its role in actions. Santayana never claimed to have the final answer, only an elucidation of experience. And that elucidation continues to haunt contemporary research and analysis of consciousness. For Appiah, many of the concerns about integrity and respect arise in terms of societal structures, respect for individuals and cultures, and the role of individual and governmental responsibilities. However, Appiah, who lives in a far more interconnected world than Santayana did, maintains an awareness of obligations to others that Santayana seems less likely to emphasize. For Appiah, the distinction between consciousness and physicality is not an issue. His discourse and narrative assume the role of human beings in shaping their own lives and cultures just as they are shaped by it. Spirituality in terms of Santayana’s approach to consciousness is not considered, nor need it be considered in Appiah’s approach. But one may ask whether there is a role for spirituality that is not simply a cultural phenomenon but individualistic value in our modern world. Appiah’s principle references to what Santayana would see as spiritual are to art and literature—​clearly aspects of spirituality that Santayana would agree with as central to human culture. Santayana’s sense that forms of spirituality are central to his way of life, and perhaps that of others, is not a central theme in Appiah’s works. Perhaps Appiah’s central view would be that cosmopolitanism has many bridges to loving together and one of the widely shared bridges is art and literature. 2.2 Santayana as World Citizen No one achieves world citizenship completely. One is always rooted in place and time, in the origin of one’s life and heritage, and these grounded circumstances of life shape one’s outlook, perspective, and philosophy. Yet some few people, even philosophers, attempt to disclose the illusions of one’s place and outlook and thereby gain a perspective that while based on one’s origins escapes the partial, parochial, and illusional aspects of individual existence. Santayana is such a philosopher. He achieved this independent perspective through his heritage, personal history, and philosophical orientation. Joseph Epstein, in a review of Santayana’s letters, writes: “If Santayana may be said to have an overarching philosophical message, it is to strip oneself of all possible illusions—​a task that can never be entirely completed—​while understanding, as best one is able, the powerful attraction of illusions to others. The person

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who can do that, as Santayana consummately could, deserves to be called a philosopher.”71 On may ask what does “world citizenship” mean? Clearly the term is not to be taken literally, as if one person could have a passport from all nations in the world. Rather I am using the term to suggest there is a global perspective that is sympathetic to all national and individual perspectives, a sympathy the nevertheless does not discount or discredit the value of one’s own perspective and culture. How is this possible? For Santayana, this global perspective, this world citizenship, is possible if one recognizes the natural basis of all life, the multiplicity of values for all living beings, and the integrity of each individual life including one’s own. Perhaps the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries will be known for the loss of healthy spirituality, aesthetics, and values. If so, one wonders what direction we will take. At the end of the nineteenth century, the nature of beauty was a principal focus of philosophy and related fields. Now it seems to reside in the backwaters of contemporary currents of thought. Personal preferences have risen on the popular tides as if they explain the realm of values. Serious investigations into the nature of spirit, value, and aesthetics, although considered important by some, are not in the center ring of our intellectual circus. And this comes at a time when many of the global conflicts and concerns emanate from rigid values. 71

Joseph Epstein, “The Permanent Transient,” The New Criterion (June 2009): 16.

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Santayana: Culture and Creativity Santayana presents us with a dilemma regarding the relationship between individuals and their culture, and that dilemma becomes even more challenging when coupled with how creativity is possible, if it is. What is the dilemma? To begin with, Santayana is a thoroughgoing naturalist. Basically accepting that whatever happens in the world is the result of natural causes and, if a complete science were possible, all events could be explained through the natural sciences. However, because all living beings view the world from their particular perspective rooted in their specific embodiment, Santayana does not believe a complete science is possible because it would have to be neutral in perspective. If all animal activity, including the human animal activity, is the result of natural causes and circumstances, then how may one reasonably develop one’s individuality and how is it possible for one to be creative? At the very least, this dilemma is puzzling. In addition, spirit or consciousness is an off-​shoot of natural causes and not a causal event. Yet, for Santayana, spirit is able to grasp the eternal in a natural, temporal world, and may escape the everyday concerns, aspirations, and desires of animal life. How is this possible if all events, including spirit or consciousness, are the result of natural causes in a physical world? I will explore these questions and attempt to find an approach that mirrors my understanding of Santayana and his remarkable focus on reason, spirit, and individuality. 1

Culture and the Individual

Historically, philosophers and social scientists have long been captivated by the relationship between the individual and societies. Our cultures focus on societal regularities, activities, customs, as well as the rules for antisocial behavior. We know that individuals are dependent on our culture and our culture is dependent on individuals. But exactly what is the relationship? More pointedly, when should individuality take precedent over societal standards, and when should societal regularities take precedent over individual behavior? Aristotle, one of Santayana’s models, noted that man is a social animal basically in three ways: by nature, by necessity, and for intellectual development

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_012

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and growth. But even if we are obviously social by nature, how one demonstrates the relationship between individuals and their culture is not simple. Historically, there are a number of traditional answers. Here are a few basic accounts of different views. Utilitarianism argues that the good of the whole outweighs that of the individual. The overall good of the majority takes precedence over the good of individuals, while fostering as much good for the majority of individuals as is possible. Rawls’ sense of justice places a priority on the least-​advantaged in society. His difference principle, putting it simply, notes that any difference in a society between the most-​advantaged and the least-​advantaged should have a positive benefit for the least-​advantaged. In other words, societies have always had the least-​advantaged among them, and any enhancement we give to the most-​advantaged in our society should be justified by an increase in the enhancement for the least-​advantaged. Social functionalists have also noted the priority of the society over the individual in that each person is formed by society. The importance of culture in our individual development is clearly reflected in the case studies of isolated and feral children (raised in the company of other animals) showing the importance of human social interaction and association for the development of individual personality. Marx and Engels saw the relationship as dialectical, where the interplay between individuals and their culture is found in history showing alienation and the subjugation of individuals in a society, and they focused on the role of individuals and groups in transforming their culture while being shaped by it. Basically, we are caught in a dilemma of views that focus on how our cultures create individuals and views that note how individuals create society. Santayana’s approach is basically that both accounts are essential and the tensions between them are natural. 2

Naturalism and the Individual

Santayana’s naturalism, sometimes he calls it materialism, is well-​known. Yet, it does seem to have developed over his lifetime and finds its fruition in Scepticism and Animal Faith and in his more fully developed Realms of Being. His naturalism is like a musical theme where one may find the notes and rhythm in his first compositions, even in The Sense of Beauty (as Arthur Danto noted in his introduction), and one then finds the full symphonic expansion in his later works. At one point, Santayana refers to himself as perhaps the only true naturalist in contemporary society. Santayana’s view of naturalism can be captured in a few points:

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Whatever happens in the natural world is natural, the result of physical causality. 2. Natural explanations provide our understanding of the world, and in an ideal world viewed from eternity without individual perspective (one that does not exist in reality), such explanations would reveal all causality in the universe. 3. As individuals, we are born at a certain time and place, and live our lives in cultures that cascade from natural causes. 4. As individuals, we are also born in a particular body (or psyche) that has natural properties which in interaction with the material world, leads us to actions, friendships, and communities. 5. Even so, our natural being, our psyche, may give rise to consciousness or spirit, that is an off-​shoot of natural causes but is an aftereffect and not causal. As a result, Santayana’s naturalism or materialism is a non-​ reductive materialism with several realms of being:  matter, spirit or consciousness, essences, and truth (which is a subset of the realm of essences). This last point is important and needs emphasis because it is what turns Santayana’s naturalism into a non-​reductive materialism, and it is what sets him apart from others of his time that called themselves naturalists. In his review of Dewey’s Experience and Nature, he sets himself apart from Dewey calling his review “Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics.” Santayana writes: “A naturalist may distinguish his own person or self, provided he identifies himself with his body and does not assign to his soul any fortunes, powers, or actions save those of which his body is the seat and organ. … Naturalism may, accordingly find room for every sort of psychology, poetry, logic, and theology, if only they are content with their natural places.”1 When consciousness or spirit is taken as substantial or material on their own account, they become metaphysical. Santayana believed he avoided this type of metaphysics and Dewey did not. Santayana’s naturalism, although perhaps more fully developed than that of other naturalists/​materialists of the twentieth century, only heightens the questions about the relationship between the individual and society. And there is further puzzlement. His criticisms of governments, of democracy, of international wars and developments, of contemporary industrialism and its impact on the least-​advantaged (the proletariat), may lead one to think that 1 George Santayana, “Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics,” Triton Edition, vol. viii, 176–​80. This is also quoted in John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 266–​67.

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the fate of human beings is not likely to be positive. But near the close of his life he counsels a pleasant calmness regarding the future of human life and of our societal structures. How can this be? To be honest, I am not sure I have an answer to these issues for Santayana, or for myself. But let me give it a try by addressing a few questions. 3

What Is the Fate of Human Life?

Here are a few important questions regarding the possible destiny of human life: Are there innate, heritable traits in human nature that determine our actions and development? Santayana in a few places seems to write as if every human being were born as a clean slate on which society or culture writes. In other places, he talks about innate characteristics that we are born with and that society then shapes and builds individuality. I  will take this latter view as his more mature outlook. For example, in “The Birth of Reason,” Santayana writes about the spirit or intellect that transcends the world as a genetic, heritable trait: “The intellect which transcends the world ideally is a function of the animal soul genetically; and it is a perfectly natural animal function, like all natural self-​transcendence in generation, perception expectation, and action.”2 As Jim Ballowe notes in “The Intellectual Traveller”: He was not merely the world’s guest; he was a “small yet integral part of it.” Yet the myth proved useful. It gave form, substance, and breadth to his vision of the world. And his works reveal a constant and varied effort to fix within that vision the experiences of over three quarters of a century.3 If there are heritable traits as the foundation of animal actions and beliefs, how are these shaped by society and cultures and how is creativity and imagination possible? Since we have no choice in when, how or to whom we are born, what choices do we have? The social customs come before us, and we basically are shaped by the language, science, government, and social mores of our time. If we are fortunate enough to be educated, we learn other languages, about other societies, other customs of behavior, and other governmental structures. We 2 George Santayana, The Birth of Reason & Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 51. 3 James Ballowe, “The Intellectual Traveller:  An Essay on George Santayana,” The Dalhousie Review, vol. 50., no. 2 (Summer, 1970), 158.

130 Chapter 10 can empathize with other cultures and even acquire their languages and some of their customs, but we are rooted where we were born. Santayana often refers to governments as being like the weather. One can sometimes predict weather changes and climates, as one can sometimes do with governmental and social structure changes. Every kind of weather may have some benefits as well as disbenefits, and the same is true of governments. Hence, for Santayana, the task is to find the weather and government with the most benefits and best suited for you to live there, much like the rest of the animal kingdom tries to do. All of this is a part of the natural course of animal development. So, where does individual freedom, responsibility, and choice come in? One possible answer is that it does not. We have no choice in being born, and we live in a world we did not choose, therefore why should we think we can choose our future? However, for Santayana, he is more open to change and not just accidental change, but change that is the result of natural causes. To understand Santayana one has to turn the tradition of rationalism on its head. One must understand that what we call reason and intelligence are physical and the result of physical causes. Our consciousness is a reflection of the physical causes, and sometimes a good reflection and other times not so. For many, perhaps most philosophers, consciousness is seen as a driving force in decisions and actions, but for Santayana consciousness or spirit is an off shoot of our psyche (our physical being), and it may provide a practical reflection of what is actually occurring, but it can also be deceptive. One may think that reason has control over one’s decisions until our physicality makes it clear that reason and consciousness do not. As when a pianist is totally absorbed in the music, and expresses that she/​he was one with the music, not aware of anything beyond it, even though the complex movements of her/​his fingers, feet, arms, and more are integral to the performance. Or when one is knocked unconscious but still lives with one’s body continuing to adapt and adjust to changing circumstances. And sometimes our physicality deceives us in our reflected consciousness as when one believes that positive thinking may be the cause of being healed from a disease rather than understanding the underlying material cause. Our physical destiny becomes apparent when death is on the doorstep and one has little or no control over what is happening to one or one’s destiny. Providing support for Santayana’s views are the current research that basically indicates consciousness of decisions comes after we begin to act, and that, even as Santayana indicates, consciousness is not constant but rather sporadic and that most of our actions occur without our being conscious of them. Stephen Hawking cites neurologist Ben Libet of the University of California, San

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Francisco, who found that the brain’s processes occur nearly half a second before a person consciously decides to begin an action. In other words, there are action-​specific electrical activities in the brain that precedes any awareness of a decision being made to act.4 But even in these circumstances, psyche may give rise to spirit or consciousness that is not bound by the temporal causality of the physical world. Contemplation of essences enables one to escape, temporarily, the natural environment. This is true not only for human beings but for other animals as well. If our psyches are embodied with heritable traits and shaped by the physical environment and culture we live in, how is creativity possible? Imagination is rooted in our psyche. Instead of reasoning directing our actions, reasoning is a derivative of our physical being. It provides insight into our natural desires and actions, sometimes perhaps acting as a good lawyer to justify our actions, but conscious reasoning or even conscious imagination are not the determining factors in creativity. Imagination and creativity are elements of our spirit, that is, reflections of our natural being. To understand our awareness of creativity, purpose, imagination and all conscious activity, we need to understand that the roots, the basis for such activities is our psyche, our physical being. For Santayana, consciousness and its objects are celebrations of our being, and as in poetry and art, we should see them as reflections of the natural world. Philosophy is an art, celebrating the objects of our spirit, the eternal nature of essences that make possible a spiritual life that is the flowering of our physical being into a consciousness not bound by the natural contingencies of our world, but in the right circumstances and with the right psyche, can contemplate the eternal. Hence, for Santayana, although he is a thoroughgoing naturalist, he finds in consciousness, that is, in spirit, something beyond the natural. He finds the eternal, even if in brief, momentary moments. And he strives for that spiritual life found in as many contemplative moments of consciousness that can be strung together of a period of time. But he knows all along that these moments are just that, moments. And one cannot live apart from one’s natural circumstances and psyche which brings all animals back to a world of action and doing. Hence, creativity in life, music, art, and any forms of consciousness is rooted in our physiology and is motivated by actions and celebrated, if at all, in consciousness.

4 See Robert A. Burton, “The Life of Meaning (Reason not Required),” New York Times, Sept. 5, 2016.

132 Chapter 10 What is our destiny and what can we do about it? Not all physical circumstances promote spiritual life and celebration. Santayana was not optimistic regarding what had occurred in the twentieth century: The contemporary world has turned its back on the attempt and even on the desire to live reasonably. The two great wars (so far) of the twentieth century were adventures in enthusiastic unreason. They were inspired by unnecessary and impracticable ambitions; and the “League” and the “United Nations” feebly set up by the victors, were so irrationally conceived that they at once reduced their victory to a stalemate. What is requisite for living rationally? I  think the conditions may be reduced to two: First, self-​knowledge, the Socratic key to wisdom; and second, sufficient knowledge of the world to perceive what alternatives are open to you and which of them are favourable to your true interests.5 Notice, he does not talk about changing the world or acting for the betterment of human beings. He even adds “so far” when mentioning the two world wars. Rather the task is knowing oneself, presumably not just from the perspective of consciousness, but from the perspective of one’s nature reflected in consciousness and the sciences. And an understanding of the world that enables one to identify and act in one’s true interests. This is very individualistic, perhaps open only to the few with such abilities and circumstances. His account of capitalism and democracy basically suggests that they are ways of taking advantage of large classes of people so that a smaller class may have more advantageous positions and opportunities, and he sees that as the root of the dissolution of both. For Santayana, there is no absolute standard for what is good for the individual or cultures. He found himself in a world that he described as “undigestible,” and as he aged and found the climate and culture that favored his own best interests, he turned to what he referred to as the spiritual life: And as the feeling of being a stranger and an exile by nature as well as by accident grew upon me in time, it came to be almost a point of pride: some people may have thought it an affectation. It was not that; I have always admired the normal child of his age and country. My case was humanly unfortunate, and involved many defects; yet it opened to 5 George Santayana, Persons and Places (Cambridge: The mit Press), 542.

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me another vocation, not better (I admit no absolute standards) but more speculative, freer, juster, and for me happier.6 The world will face upheavals, wars, repression and remarkably despicable actions by individuals and by governments and cultures. But those same natural causes can give rise to societies that also foster greater support for individuality of many kinds. In the paragraph that has the marginal heading, “But earthquakes do not destroy the earth,” he writes: “The very fact, however, that these evils have deep roots, and have long existed without destroying Western civilization, but on the contrary, have stimulated its contrary virtues and confused arts,—​this very fact seems to me to counsel calmness in contemplating the future.7 4

How Is Such a View Relevant for Our Current Time?

Let me posit a few assumptions that may not be shared by all: 1. We live in a time when governmental democracies have been growing and prospering over the last two centuries, but where they are now declining, and more countries, including the United States, are becoming more nationalistic, less global in interests, and less inclined to endorse the inevitability of progressive democratic governments. 2. Accompanying nationalism are rising expressions of racism and anti-​Semitism. Horrific genocides continue today with little recognition:  Bosnia, Rohingya refugees, the Nuer and other ethnic groups in South Sudan, Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria, Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic, Darfur in Sudan, and more. In the United States there now appears an openness to white nationalism that stems from our early beginnings with slavery, and denying citizenship based on the color of one’s skin. Our current presidential administration focuses on an American nationalism and seems intent on withdrawing from international issues and global concerns. Other countries seem to be having similar tendencies toward nationalism. I am thinking of the recent elections in Austria, Germany, Britain, Hungary and Poland.

6 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 539. 7 Ibid., 546.

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More people are feeling disenfranchised in democratic governments. As if their votes do not count. America has a disturbing voting record with only a small percentage of eligible voters that show up at the polls. Along with the growing nationalism and populism, there is less confidence in democracy. The columnist David Brooks has noted: As Yascha Mounk writes in his book The People vs. Democracy, faith in democratic regimes is declining with every new generation. Seventy-​one percent of Europeans and North Americans born in the 1930s think it’s essential to live in a democracy, but only 29 percent of people born in the 1980s think that. In the U.S., nearly a quarter of millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a country. Nearly half would like a strongman leader. One in six Americans of all ages supports military rule.8

5.

Controlling our own destiny may seem more out of reach as the world becomes more integrated through scientific advances, through communication systems that are reshaping the world, and through the development of weapons of mass destruction that are in the hands of a few decision makers. 6. During such times, it is remarkable that there are significant movements pressing forward to represent those who have been left out of the progressive democracies including lgbtq, MeToo, TimesUp, Parkland students, and many more. But will their impact last? 7. There is a growing rise of autocratic governments, some of which have moved forward in significant ways economically, culturally, and militarily. I am particularly thinking of China. In such circumstances, Santayana’s view may be the wise one. That is, find the place you are most at home, where your interests are best met, where the cultural climate best suits your true interests. Whether that be a more contemplative life as envisioned by Santayana, or a more active life geared to reshaping governments, science, arts, sports, education, or whatever. Perhaps his naturalistic account is correct, but that does not mean we are not free to act or to make choices; it only means that understanding our actions and our choices is not rooted in reason, argument, or judgment. Rather reason, argument, and judgment are rooted in our physiology and the natural world and culture shaping our natural interests. If one wants to understand the causal structure of our actions, one turns to a physiological explanation structured 8 David Brooks, “The Chaos After Trump,” New York Times, March 6, 2018.

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in particular environments. Hence, scientific research attempting to explain complex animal action includes human action. Our reason, argument, and judgments are reflections of these physical occurrences. As reflections they are more like poetry in providing insights into what is actually occurring in our physical selves and the material world. Depending on our environment and our psyches, we may have a range of freedom, as most complex animals do. Hence, self-​knowledge and understanding the excellence of others remain paramount, but the standard approach of philosophy in which conscious reasoning and judgment are determinants of our actions is misdirected. They may or may not reflect what is physically driving our actions, but when they do not reflect the reality of our lives in the undercurrents of our physicality, they provide insights into what causes our actions. Each animal, including humans has an excellence that can be appreciated but is unlikely to be achieved fully in such a world. In an ideal world, the task would be to create an environment that permits each animal to achieve that excellence, but the world is not naturally harmonious, and conflicts of interest make the ideal world impossible. Even so, if one can find an environment that fosters one’s excellence more than other environments, there one should try to make one’s home, as Santayana did. I end with a quote from Santayana: Morality is something natural. It arises and varies, not only psychologically but prescriptively and justly, with the nature of the creature whose morality it is. Morality is something relative, not that its precepts in any case or optional or arbitrary; for each man they are defined by his innate character and possible forms of happiness and action. His momentary passions or judgments are partial expressions of his nature but not adequate or infallible; and ignorance of the circumstances may mislead in practice, as ignorance of self may mislead in desire. But this fixed good is relative to each species and each individual; so that in considering the moral ideal of any philosopher, two questions arise. First, does he, like Spinoza, understand the natural basis of morality, or is he confused and superstitious on the subject? Second, how humane and representative is his sense for the good, and how far, by his disposition or sympathetic intelligence, does he appreciate all the types of excellence toward which life may be directed?9 9 George Santayana, Persons and Places, 234–​35.

pa rt 2 Challenges in Editorship and Assorted Pieces

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Introduction to Part 2 In 1976 John Lachs asked me to write the first National Endowment for the Humanities proposal for The Works of George Santayana. At first, I was reluctant, but John was convincing. The first grant ran from 1977–​79, and its purpose was to demonstrate whether completing a twenty-​volume edition of Santayana’s works in a timely fashion was viable or not. The challenges were many, and I  quickly understood why another person who had been asked to write the grant several years before had not. Even so, the challenges were far less than the delight that would emerge in my twenty-​seven years of editing the Santayana Edition. The initial challenge was finding the locations of the manuscripts, typescripts, letters, and other documentation. Because Santayana spent a significant part of his mature life living in hotels and traveling, there was no single reservoir of work and the known Santayana document locations were international. Surprisingly, there was no bibliography of Santayana’s works and other documents. John Jones and I began the first full bibliography of Santayana’s works along with identifying where the documents were housed. Eventually that work was published in 1982. (Saatkamp and Jones, George Santayana: A Bibliographical Checklist, 1982). I was both surprised and pleased that I received the neh grant, and, even more surprising, I was informed they were giving me slightly more than I had asked because they thought I had underestimated my expenses for travel. They were right, and on several occasions, I stayed overnight in not the nicest of places, including one, seven-​dollars-​a-​night hotel in New York City where it seemed that various illegal activities originated in the lobby and where I battled roaches for writing on a small desk and for sleeping room. Because of the grant, I traveled to many locations throughout the U.S. to examine material and artifacts of Santayana’s life. I met with Santayana’s family in Spain and in Boston and traveled to Rome to meet with Santayana’s literary executrix, Mrs. Margot Cory. All this was remarkably exciting, enlightening, and encouraging regarding the possibility of publishing a critical edition of Santayana’s works. I was pleased with the outcome and hoped I would be able to demonstrate that the material, people, organization and perhaps a publisher would be in place. For my own part, I had not intended to spend the rest of my life editing Santayana’s works, but little did I know how small discoveries and meetings would lead to major shifts in my scholarly future. Completing The Works of George Santayana depended on several factors: (1) gaining the support and endorsement of Mrs. Cory for the project; (2) physically locating as much Santayana material as possible and determining its

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accessibility; (3) developing a staff, editorial board, advisory committees and finding a textual editor; and (4) finding a publisher willing to commit to such a large project. 1

Support of Literary Executrix

Meeting Mrs. Cory in Rome for the first time was a delight and a challenge. If I did not secure her endorsement of the edition, all efforts would end there. She was living in a modest establishment, the Hotel Dinesen near the Pincio Gardens. She had only one room with a closet, a bed, a small night stand, and a chair. The bath was down the hall. I  was struck by the scarcity of her circumstances. Daniel Cory assumed that his earnings from Santayana’s royalties would support him and his wife throughout their lives. Given Santayana’s reputation in 1952 when Santayana died, that was probably not a bad assumption. Santayana’s philosophical works had sold well since 1896 and his 1936 novel, The Last Puritan, was on the best-​seller list in the U.S. and Britain and was translated into many languages. The first book of his autobiography, Persons and Places (1944), also was on the best-​seller list with many published translations. To the surprise of some of Santayana’s Boston family, Santayana requested that Daniel Cory receive all the royalties from the Persons and Places, and the royalties were significant. But after Santayana’s death in 1952, philosophical specialization turned away from Santayana to more analytic and specialized approaches, and the royalties took a downward spiral. Hence, after Daniel Cory died in 1972, Mrs. Cory lived on a meager income in Rome. When we first met, she was in her late seventies, and I was surprised by her living arrangements, but she was well dressed, somewhat formal in greeting me, and seemed pleased that I invited her to dinner each evening. Very quickly my impressions of her grew more positive. She was lively, remarkably adept, and fully alert with a clear British accent, sense of propriety and humor. I spent the first week pursuing Santayana’s paths in Rome and a few of my own interests in art and history. In the late afternoon, Mrs. Cory and I would drink wine in her room and then we would go to dinner. I was pleased to pay for the dinners as I was certain Mrs. Cory had not eaten out in some time. And she was enthusiastic about Rome, the restaurants, the wine, and the legacies of Santayana and of her husband. My first day in Rome she had arranged a bus tour for me of the city. I was young and perhaps surer of myself than I should have been. The last thing I wanted was a typical bus tour around Rome, so I quietly cancelled the reservation. Instead, I walked the paths that Santayana took, sat on the benches where he rested during his walks, caught

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glimpses of what he saw during his time in Rome, visited the location of the former Spanish Embassy on the Spanish Steps where Santayana fell and nearly died after renewing his Spanish passport in 1952, met with scholars and artists who knew or knew of Santayana, visited his hotel residencies, and met with the sisters at the hospital of the Blue Nuns, Clinica della Piccola Compagna di Maria. When time allowed, I looked for Caravaggio paintings in Rome. I admired Caravaggio’s work in the United States, and I soon realized that his finest work was in Rome. However, I was concerned about not taking the bus tour that Mrs. Cory suggested, and I worried about her reaction should she find out. But sometimes circumstances take unexpected turns, and as Santayana says, nature laughs at us. As it turned out, my not taking the bus tour and seeking out Caravaggio paintings actually contributed to my becoming the General Editor, although there was no way of knowing that at the time. Sometime during my first week in Rome, Mrs. Cory and I met for wine as usual before going to dinner, and she asked me how I liked the bus tour. I was not sure what to say, but I simply said I did not take the tour. I can still feel her moving forward in her chair, her hands tightening on the armrest, her reddish-​ brown hair all in place and perfectly matching her forest green suit and handbag. She looked me straight in the eyes and said, “What! You did not take the tour! What have you been doing with yourself all this time?” She was stern, perhaps scolding, and clearly unhappy. Her look lessened some as I told her about my walks and my visits to Santayana’s places. Then I  mentioned that I was also looking for Caravaggio’s work. Again, with a serious look, she asked me what guidebook I was using. I handed her my well-​marked, turned-​down-​ corner pages of the Blue Book of Rome. She quickly thumbed through it, and then said the book was adequate, but that she knew the location of every Caravaggio painting in Rome and tomorrow she would be my guide. What a relief and a joy! Together we took Santayana’s walks, visited his remarkable gravesite in Panteón de la Obra Pía Española. In older parts of the cemetery workers were removing some gravesites. Mrs. Cory noted there was a lot of “skullduggery” going on. I  liked her humor. And we found so many Caravaggio’s that I  was overwhelmed. Once we were so long at one collection in a church that the priest came over to make sure we were OK as I continued to put the necessary coins in the machine to turn on the lights to view the paintings. I did not intend nor desire to be the editor of Santayana’s works. My scholarship for the past four years had turned to the philosophy of economics. I had some small grants, and I was making academic and governmental presentations as well as participating in General Electric forums. But because of my respect and admiration for John Lachs, I agreed to write the first grant assuming

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he would become the editor. He was a distinguished scholar while I had just received tenure in my fifth year of teaching. There were at least two other well-​ known scholars who indicated to me that they would like to be the editor of Santayana’s works if I established that the edition was possible. So, my intention was to suggest John Lachs to Mrs. Cory as the editor and to hold the others in reserve. A few days before I left Rome to fly back to the U.S., Mrs. Cory asked who would be the editor. I emphasized the scholarly attributes of John Lachs and his commitment to Santayana studies. She asked if there were others, and I mentioned one more. She said she knew who the editor should be. I was immediately concerned as to whom she had in mind if not the people I mentioned. Then came the surprise. Perhaps because of Caravaggio and our time together, she smiled and pointed her finger at me. I explained that I had just received tenure, and although my dissertation was on Santayana and I had published some articles, I  did not have the scholarly standing needed. Over several days this discussion continued over wine and dinner, and she insisted that I be the editor. Finally, I said I would think about it, but I thought it unlikely that I would do this, and I noted that I could not accept the title of General Editor until we had a publisher committed to the entire edition. To me, that seemed to provide an easy out since I was not convinced that such a publisher could be found with me as editor. As I flew out of Rome, I began to worry about how John Lachs would react. But that concern was misplaced as he immediately indicated he thought that Mrs. Cory had made the best decision. 2

Locating Santayana Documents

The location of Santayana material would continue throughout the project. The bibliography helped a great deal. I made many visits to the principal holdings at Harvard, Columbia, University of Texas-​Austin, Princeton, University of Virginia, University of California-​Berkeley, Jewish Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Complutense University of Madrid, University of Salamanca, Ávila, to name only a few, and also to a number of private collections. And there were many surprises and as well as disappointments. One of the greatest surprises was finding a missing manuscript for Santayana’s autobiography. Disappointments came in not finding material that we hoped were still extant. First, one surprise highlights the work of the edition and the length of time it took to edit the first volume. I  made the decision to publish Santayana’s three-​book autobiography first. This was not the customary approach. Most editions publish chronologically, and the autobiography first appeared in 1944 after many previous publications. My reasoning was that the autobiography

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was well-​known, and since it covered the whole of Santayana’s life, it would provide the background information and historical scholarship necessary for the full edition. Besides, it was clear the autobiography needed editing. The first two books were completed during wwii when communication between the publisher and Santayana was not possible. Indeed, in order to get the first typescript, Scribner’s secretly worked through the U.S. government, the Swiss government, and the Vatican to have the first typescript smuggled out of Rome through Switzerland to New York. The second book was literally carried by a willing soldier to Scribner’s offices in New York. The soldier had visited Santayana after Rome was liberated, and because he was returning home to the U.S., Santayana asked him to take the typescript back with him to Scribner’s. The actual handwritten manuscripts for the first and third books were housed in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection at Columbia University. Corliss Lamont, a philosopher, philanthropist, and a Santayana admirer, arranged for the purchase of these along with other Santayana items housed there. I visited Corliss Lamont whenever I was in New York City, and he provided significant funding for the first years of the Santayana Edition. His admiration and knowledge of Santayana were a delight for me. Arthur Danto introduced us and helped to make arrangements for my visits to Columbia University. Research resulted in over 600 typed pages of textual differences between the manuscripts and the published editions and impressions. There were many reasons for so many textual differences. Because of printing costs, Scribner’s omitted all of Santayana’s marginal headings, or as Santayana called them “marginal notes.” Critical references to Spinoza were omitted from the publications apparently due to the sensitivities resulting from the Holocaust and the death camps. This occurred even with Santayana’s reference to Spinoza as his “master and model.”1 Some comments about John Stanley Russell as well as Bertrand Russell were also deleted from publication out of concern about possible lawsuits. The translations of Santayana’s Latin, Greek, German, and French did not meet Santayana’s standards. When Santayana finally saw the published first book of his autobiography, he asked that all his marginal notes be restored, errors of transcription be corrected (e.g., confusion over eternal and external), that translations be restored to their original language, and excluded material be included. But this was not done until the publication of the first volume of the critical edition in 1986. Meanwhile in the late 1970s and early 1980s I and the small Santayana staff completed extensive sight collations,

1 George Santayana, Persons and Places:  Fragments of Autobiography(Cambridge:  The mit Press, 1986), 235.

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double checking the differences we found to make sure they were accurate and that we had not missed anything. We then sent the text out for publication. We were producing one of the first editions set for electronic publication through printing codes embedded in the text. There was great relief and a small celebration when the coded text went to the publisher. However, that was short-​ lived. A difficult but extremely important surprise delayed our publication of the autobiography by several years. I met with Mr. Charles Scribner, Jr., shortly after returning from my visit to Rome. He greeted me by quoting Santayana from memory, and we enjoyed a few more visits after the first. I needed Scribner’s permission to publish the full edition, and he was willing to give it. Most of the Scribner’s volumes on Santayana were no longer being published but they still held the copyrights. Mr. Scribner was somewhat surprised when I asked that Mrs. Cory be given a significant percentage of the royalties. But he quickly agreed when I explained her financial circumstances. There were some more personal and sometimes humorous moments we shared regarding Santayana and the Scribner’s staff. The Scribner’s material had been deposited at Princeton University Library, but all those documents ended around 1946, and I was confident there were more documents after that period since Scribner’s published the third book of the autobiography in 1953 and Dominations and Powers was published in 1951. Mr. Scribner indicated that all known documents had been deposited at Princeton University, and he did not know of any others. We discussed this a few times, but the answer was the same. Then in 1982 John McCormick contacted me. He was working on a comprehensive biography of Santayana, and we had been in contact for several years, and I had served as one of his references for two Guggenheim awards. John lived in Princeton, and he told me that Scribner’s had just deposited additional Santayana material in the Rare Books and Special Collections in the Princeton Firestone Library. By happenstance, I was making presentations at the University of Delaware later that month, but I could only come to Princeton on the weekend when the Rare Books section was closed. John McCormick arranged to make copies of some relevant material for me to review when I came to his home that weekend. One item immediately took center stage. It contained the name of the soldier, Sergeant Freidenberg, who had taken the typescript of the second book (The Middle Span) from Rome to Scribner’s. I  immediately contacted the Army, and it was agreed that they would forward a letter from me to the former soldier. All this took some time, and when I received a response, I called the former soldier. He had been given Santayana’s handwritten manuscript as a thank you gift from Santayana for making sure the typescript got to Scribner’s

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safely. He had the manuscript bound in leather and it was sitting on his shelf by his desk. However, he was not able to share the manuscript with me at the time. He was an accountant and it was income tax time. I asked if I or an assistant could come to make copies, but he declined and indicated he may try to sell the manuscript through a rare books and manuscript dealer he knew. I noted that I thought Columbia University was the right place for the manuscript along with the two other manuscripts. His efforts to sell the manuscript did not play out, and on a later phone call he indicated he would send me the manuscript by Federal Express. I was worried about the possible damage to, or loss of, this valuable manuscript in the mail. Mr. Freidenberg indicated he would insure the package, send it in a metal box, and it should be delivered in a few days. A week went by and I anxiously called again. He apologized noting he had not been able to send the package as planned but that it was now on the way. Eventually, I received the original manuscript bound in leather, and we could begin making the sight collations with it. However, this meant we had to delay publication of the first volume and begin working on the extensive collations for the second book of the autobiography. This was a marvelous find, and I was able to work with the original manuscript for several months. I contacted Corliss Lamont who arranged to purchase it for Columbia University. There were also disappointments. I thought I might find some of Santayana’s letters held by his relatives in Spain. Once I was able to visit the retreat farmhouse of Celedonio Sastre who married Susana, Santayana’s sister. The maid there even knew Santayana and recounted his visits. She brought out a large trunk that had some Santayana items in it. When we opened the trunk, I openly hoped for a treasure of letters, particularly his correspondence with his father. But there were none. Another more dramatic disappointment, even tragic, was when I  was at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Cincinnati examining documents in the Horace Kallen collection. Many of the documents had not been catalogued, and I was given boxes of folders to go through. In opening one of the folders I first saw a typescript with handwritten notes in the margin. But as I opened the folder, the paper disintegrated into small and large chunks and rushed to the bottom of the folder like a jigsaw puzzle. I took the folder to the person at the head desk, noting what had happened. She sadly noted that acid-​free paper did not exist when Kallen was writing and, as a result, many papers from that time period were disintegrating. Preserving these documents was a challenge. To preserve historic documents electronic editions and copies were even more important than I had realized.

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Developing Editorial Staff and Support

Establishing the text of a critical edition is a community undertaking. A listing of the many Assistant Editors and student Research Assistants who were a part of the project may be found in the introductions to the various books of the edition. There are many, including some who are still working on the edition. With the first neh grant, I worked largely alone, sometimes with the support of part-​time undergraduate assistants. As the grants continued at the University of Tampa, I was able to hire a professional staff assistant, Shirley Cueto, and had a volunteer research associate, John Jones, along with some undergraduate assistants. I was fortunate to find William G. Holzberger as my textual editor. He was working on the publication of Santayana’s letters and had a significant background in the literary aspect of Santayana’s outlook. Together we were able to more than double the number of letters from Santayana that Holzberger originally had. His textual scholarship in literature transferred to his work on a critical edition, sight collations, documentation through letters and other manuscripts, and a positive working relationship with me and the Santayana staff. Annegret Holzberger was also an immense help during this period. Texas A&M University provided additional support, professional staff assistants through Donna Hanna-​Calvert, Kris Frost, and Brenda Bridges along with graduate research assistants, and matching funds for National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as travel support and much larger research space. Indiana University Indianapolis welcomed the Santayana Edition, and Marianne Wokeck helped manage the edition along with Kris Frost who moved to Indianapolis continuing her work on the edition. I left the edition to become President of Stockton University in 2003. It was perhaps the most difficult professional decision of my career. Even so, I am delighted that the work on The Works of George Santayana continues under the leadership of Martin Coleman in the Institute for American Thought, an institute that I was instrumental in founding when I was Dean of the School of Liberal Arts. Proudly, it houses the Santayana Edition, Josiah Royce Papers, Peirce Edition Project, the Frederick Douglass Papers, and the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. I edited the Santayana edition for twenty-​six years. Throughout it all, I received the support and advice from an editorial board and several advisory boards. At that time, the edition also published Overheard in Seville: The Bulletin of the Santayana Society that I  edited along with Angus Kerr-​Lawson. And the meetings of the Santayana Society were arranged by me through the organization. In addition, I was privileged to receive the support and advice of many individuals working on other editions, including the Dewey, James, Peirce, and Melville editions, to mention only a few. I joined the Association

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for Documentary Editing and eventually was elected President. The ade was a remarkable resource. My own skills in editing Santayana developed even further through the many ade scholars. ade traditionally focused on historical and literary figures and collections. By the time I became President the membership had increased to include sciences, medicine, music, philosophy, religion, and the arts. Learning about and comparing approaches to editing the works of Darwin, Einstein, Mozart, Shakespeare, Lewis and Clark, Olmsted, and many more persons and groups provided a significant learning experience. My understanding of how one preserves documents in all fields of scholarship brought delight and an appreciation for the gigantic tasks being undertaken. These editions make available so much that sometimes is closeted in collections, and there is the excitement of a new generation of electronic editions available to a worldwide audience. 4

Publisher

Finding a willing publisher was easy but the terms were not. Several university presses wanted to publish the edition, but they were only willing to publish one volume at a time, meaning that each volume would have to be approved one by one. I was unwilling to do that given the extensive work it was going to take, and I  did not want to rely on the ups and downs of the publishing industry. The presses at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Texas were open to publishing the edition but would not commit to the full edition up front. Finally, in 1983 Dr.  Henny Wenkart contacted her friend at The mit Press, Betty Stanton. mit recently had received a grant to do more humanities publications, and mit agreed to publish the full edition. By then I held an endowed chair in philosophy and my scholarship on Santayana was well established. Now, the edition had neh funding and a well-​known and recognized press. 5

Conclusion

There is no easy way to sum up a lifetime of editing The Works of George Santayana. The pieces in this section indicate some of the principles of producing a critical edition, their implications for future work, and the complications of determining the final intentions of Santayana. The pieces attempt to explicate both foundational issues in documenting editing and technical issues as to how to achieve the final text of a book.

­c hapter 11

Final Intentions, Social Context, and Santayana’s Autobiography Philosophers, literary critics, and scholarly editors have written extensively on the concepts of intention. And although I  believe considerable headway has been made in understanding these concepts, I shall not review past accounts1 or introduce new categorical schemes. Instead, in this paper I discuss the relationships between authorial final intentions and their social context, introducing a modest claim concerning their interplay; I also provide an account of the textual history of Santayana’s autobiography that illustrates the interplay between Santayana’s intentions and the socio-​historical context, and suggest a few descriptive categories for understanding the final intentions associated with Santayana’s autobiography; finally, I recommend that professional organizations consider proposing critical editions of major, contemporary authors who could make informed judgments about the final state of their published works. 1

Final Intentions and Social Context

The term definitive edition has been subjected to careful and telling criticism, and some editorial scholars are now maintaining that the concept of final intention, when carefully examined, is also inadequate as the basis for editorial decisions and should be abandoned.2 Perhaps they are right, if only because the term final intention appears to be causing confusion. However, the arguments against using the term final intention seem to be flawed in at least two respects:  (1) these arguments rest on a sharp distinction between authorial intention and the social context and, ironically, the interplay between an author’s intentions and the publishing environment is neglected; and (2) little 1 G. Thomas Tanselle has given an initial account of philosophical and literary approaches to the concepts of intention in his “The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention,” in Selected Studies in Bibliography (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1979), 309–​53. Reprinted from Studies in Bibliography (29 [1976]: 167–​211). 2 See Jerome J. McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 37–​49, 55–​80, esp. 67.

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150 Chapter 11 attention has been given to the role of the social context in requiring that an author’s intentions have a central import in publishing a book. 1.1 Interplay between Authorial Intentions and the Social Context Simply stated, a central argument used to support the demise of “final intentions” rests on three points: 1. A sharp distinction is drawn between authorial intentions and their social context (copyeditors, publisher’s profit margin, amanuensis, scholarly editors); 2. It is noted, replete with editing examples, that the social context plays a legitimate, authoritative role in the writing and publishing of a work; 3. The social context therefore cannot be ignored, indeed can often be the decisive authority, when determining the final form of a published work.3 It has been emphasized that the force of this argument rests on the authoritative role of the social context in publishing. But it is also established on a sharp and, I believe, far too simple distinction between authorial intentions and the social context. The importance of the social context in publishing is unquestionable, but this context is also intertwined with authorial intentions. Personal intentions and social contexts are distinguishable in thought, but in action they are dialectically intertwined such that crystalline distinctions between them seem manufactured. To focus on one, excluding their interplay, leads to unnecessarily incoherent and unrealistic positions. Borrowing a phrase from Alfred North Whitehead, it is “misplaced concretion” to consider in isolation either an author’s intentions or the social context. The reality of the relationship between authorial intentions and social context is that they are distinguishable but not separable. Instead of arguing for the primacy of either authorial intentions or the social context, I advocate a more modest approach: the interplay between authorial intention and social context is a complex but genuine aspect of publishing, and this interplay places authorial intentions at a critical point in the publication of a work, particularly that of a book of prose or poetry by a single author. This approach is an attempt to recognize the importance of both authorial intentions and of the social context while at the same time avoiding, if possible, the more theoretical (and perhaps more enchanting) issues related to individual responsibility and social realities. Broadly described, the social context 3 This argument is summarized by Jerome J. McGann: “The fully authoritative text is … always one which has been socially produced; as a result, the critical standard for what constitutes authoritativeness cannot rest with the author and his intentions alone.” Ibid., 75.

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not only is a significant determining factor in what an author intends but also predisposes the author with certain preferences, e.g., the native language of the author. And if one is not careful in these considerations, one can be thrust into the foray of questions confronting personal and social ethics as well as issues about freedom and determinism, historical materialism, socio-​biology, etc. These issues often rest on a sharp distinction between the individual and the society, and focusing on one prong of that distinction depends on whether one supports the primacy of the personal or of the social (or biological). Avoiding the theoretical and possibly foundational questions of the primacy of the individual or of the social context, it may be sufficient to simply note that the social context is an integral part of the author’s intentions and that the author’s intentions are also an integral part of the social context of publishing. The writer submits manuscripts to publishers for all manner of social reasons:  the publisher is known to be amenable to particular types of publications, the author has been recommended to the editor, the author met someone from the press at a party, the author has decided on a random mailing, the editor is his uncle, or the press has published the writer’s previous works. To understand the author’s intentions, even his considered and mature intentions about a particular work, one cannot overlook the desire to publish, to reach a particular audience of readers, to earn royalties, to write in a style acceptable for the publishing market. Within the writer there are many crosscurrents broadly delineated as tensions between autonomy and homonomy, between being self-​governing and being an accepted part of society. Publishers, copyeditors, publication methods, sales formulas, economic conditions, war and peace—​all may play decided roles in an individual writer’s intentions.4 Likewise, the social context is not without consideration of the author’s intentions. Economic factors are a powerful determining reality in publication, but a part of that economy is the extent to which a publisher honors the author’s intentions. Should a publisher have the reputation of insensitivity to authors, then, in a relatively stable and moderately competitive market, that publisher’s economic future will be affected. As a result, publishers’ files are filled with letters to authors explaining why specific wishes of authors can or cannot be met. These files are demonstrative evidence of the publishers’ compliance with economic realities and market efficiencies, as well as of their respect for authors. The best copyeditors attempt to make clearer what the 4 Following John L. Austin’s distinctions of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary, one might be able to draw distinctions between the writing of a work, the performative aspect of authoring a work, and what is brought about by the writing and publishing of a work. See his How to Do Things With Words (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 108.

152 Chapter 11 author intended to say, spending considerable time reading and determining the thrust, the “active intention”5 of the writer. If there are crosscurrents entwined and tensed between what we are simply characterizing as authorial intentions and social context, how can one hope to make a reasoned judgement concerning variant readings in published works? One approach is a practical solution, not theoretically embroiled in controversy over the primacy of the individual or of society. And the Greg-​Bowers-​ Tanselle tradition of final intentions offers just such a pragmatic solution without the dogmatic trimmings of ideological conviction. This pragmatic solution seems ultimately to rest on the foundational claim that intentions may be coupled with the responsibility for actions and that an author has a principal responsibility for the form and content of her or his work. From this basis, two guidelines may be presented:  (1) the author’s responsibility for substantive content (words) is usually more distinct than for form; and (2) the author’s responsibility for form is normally sharper for accidentals (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, word division, paraphrasing, and devices of emphasis) than for the presentational format of the work (type style, binding, single or double column). Of course, if an editorial scholar turns the pragmatic notion of final intentions into ideological cant without recognition of the historical/​social conventions and their interplay with authorial intention, then one might well recall Santayana’s description of a fanatic: a person who has lost sight of his goals and redoubled his efforts.6 1.2 The Central Import of Authorial Intentions in Social Context Authorial intentions are inherent to the social context of writing and publishing a book. This is so merely because the act of writing a book for publication is a social act. The extent to which an author’s intentions play significant roles in that social act determines their importance to the social framework. Hence, the social context of a work may include most authorial intentions, including final intentions. However, the social context obviously includes more than authorial intentions: the specific economics of publishing, printing techniques, conventions of publishing style and format, taste and preference of 5 Michael Hancher, “Three Kinds of Intention,” Modern Language Notes, 87 (1972): 827–​51. As he writes: “Active intentions characterize the actions that the author, at the time he finishes his text, understands himself to be performing in that text.”: 830. 6 George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905), 13. The precise quote is the following: “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”

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copyeditors and editors, and sometimes events of a far broader nature such as national taxation policies, diplomatic relationships, and issues of public acceptability and of national security. Within the broad reaches of the social context, authorial intentions, including final intentions, play a central role. The social act of publishing a work by a single author is just that: the publication of a work by an author. Ideally, the conventions and circumstances of publishing enable an author to publish her or his work with the clearest content and in a presentable and appealing format. This ideal is seldom fully realized, and when it can be demonstrated that an author’s intentions conflict with prevailing conventions, acquiescence to necessity cannot be taken to mean that the author intended a particular form or content of publication. The social act of publishing a work focuses on the goal of making available the work of a particular author, and when conditions distort that goal, the scholar needs to determine, if possible, what best represents the considered and mature judgements of an author. Of course, the author’s judgements may be in accord with publishing conventions and circumstances. If they are, it is the accord of the social context with the author’s intention that validates the conventions, not the reverse. Even if the term final intentions were to drop entirely from usage in scholarly editing—​a prospect I think unlikely—​there would still remain the necessity of attempting to determine the considered and mature judgements of authors regarding their works. 1.3 The Paradigm of Final Intentions The paradigm of authorial final intentions consists in determining the considered, mature, and documented judgements of an author concerning the form and content of her or his work as it is to appear in published form. The practical value of the paradigm is ascertained by its clarity and fruitfulness. It must accurately represent enough instances to be useful, and it should provide interpretative meaning for the nonparadigmatic cases instead of discounting them. In general, this paradigm of final intentions appears to be quite fruitful when applied to the publication of a book by a single author but less fruitful, sometimes considerably less, when applied to works that have a significant performance aspect, such as ballads, plays, and operas. Performance-​oriented literature may have authorial intentions as its springboard, but its form and content are shaped and altered by the flux of staging, performing, and acting as well as reviews and audience response. For example, the social significance and historical development of the ballad has broader relevance to the “active meaning” or illocutionary aspect of the ballad than does the intention of the

154 Chapter 11 original author. With the ballad, the author’s mature and considered intentions, if they can be known, may not have historical or literary significance, but they would most likely not take precedence over the historically and socially defined form and content. Even in the case of books written by a single author, there are practical and circumstantial issues that may make it difficult and even impossible to apply the paradigm of final intentions. An example is a case where the only available evidence may be the editions and impressions of the published work or, worse yet, only fragments of these. Absent any clear evidence of an author’s intention independent of the published work, the editorial scholar must simply rely on what is available and produce the most accurate critical edition within her or his powers. But such operational difficulties alone do not turn the paradigm belly-​up. They may limit its application, just as geometries are limited to a particular spatial applications, but they do not discount its value. It may well be that the highest value of the paradigm rests with books written by individual authors whose intentions are documented in holographs, letters, annotations, publishers’ files, other publications, and recorded conversations. And this in turn may mean that the paradigm has a much higher value for nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century works than for works of earlier periods. As a nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century author, Santayana is an archetype for the application of the paradigm of final intentions to his works. After resigning his professorship at Harvard in 1912 (age forty-​eight) in order to become a full-​time writer, Santayana took consistent and considerable care to document his intentions for his works, including collected editions that might come after his death (he died in 1952 in his eighty-​ninth year). For example, Santayana wished to have British spelling in all his published works. He wrote the holograph of his autobiography using the British forms, he clearly stated his preferences in letters and annotations, and he frequently requested his publisher honor these preferences. But in a clear conflict with Santayana’s intention, the publisher altered the spelling to acceptable American forms. Ironically, because the British edition of the work is set from the American edition’s sheets, even the British edition has the American forms. In such a setting, the editorial scholar would be remiss if the social conventions were given priority over the expressed intent of the author. On the other hand, these conventions could justifiably be given priority over authorial intention if a scholar determined that Santayana reconsidered his earlier preference and expressly endorsed the American forms, i.e., his final intention differed from his earlier one. Apart from the social conventions being in accord with Santayana’s final intention, it is difficult to see another justification for the social convention receiving primacy over earlier authorial intention.

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Santayana’s Intentions and the Textual History of His Autobiography

The concept of final intentions provided clarity and interpretive usefulness in the editing of Santayana’s three-​part autobiography, Persons and Places. And given the tragic publishing history of this work, the intelligibility of the concept was most welcome. Santayana expressed his disappointment with the initial publication of his autobiography in the following words: I regard this edition of Persons and Places as a mutilated victim of war, and dream of a standard edition, which I  probably shall never see, in which the original words, the omitted passages, and the marginal comments (not headings, as in the Triton Edition) shall be restored, and the portraits and other illustrations shall be well reproduced.7 From composition to publication, few modern textual documents have suffered more than Santayana’s autobiography. The monogenous stemma8 of the autobiography began in 1920, when Santayana was fifty-​seven. He began writing down reminiscences, which by late 1930s comprised four notebooks of jottings that were reasonably well organized but significantly quilted with deletions, insertions, false starts, and partial completions. In 1940 he began his fair-​copy holograph. Intended as a one-​volume work to be published posthumously, it was published instead as three individual works. Only the third book was published posthumously in 1953; the other two were published in 1944 and 1945, respectively. The circumstances of the early 1940s caused Santayana, for the moment, to set aside his ambitions for his autobiography. After an unsuccessful attempt to leave Italy for Switzerland, Santayana lived in Rome for the duration of World War ii, trapped by circumstances and by his age. At the same time, Santayana’s friend Daniel Cory was stranded in New  York without any clear means of support. To assist his friend, Santayana arranged for the royalties of his autobiography, whenever it was published, to be paid directly to Cory. In addition, Santayana’s publishers, particularly Scribner’s, were eager to issue what would become a Book of the Month Club best-​seller, and they urged that the 7 The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941–​1947, William G. Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2006): 136. 8 For a full description see the textual commentary of Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, volume 1 of The Works of George Santayana (Cambridge and London: The mit Press, 1986): 582–​610.

156 Chapter 11 autobiography be published piecemeal instead of as a whole. Furthermore, there was an undercurrent of fear that the manuscript might be destroyed or lost during the war. These circumstances convinced Santayana to permit the publication of his autobiography in three parts and to allow the first two parts to be published before his death. The typescript for book one was spirited out of Rome and delivered to Scribner’s sub rosa, and likewise the typescript for book two was privately carried from Rome to the United States when official mail and other channels would not permit it to be brought in otherwise.9 Following these adventures, the fate of the first portions of his autobiography was fully in the hands of his publishers and editors because Santayana could not receive galleys or communication from the United States or England. These circumstances contributed to what Santayana termed the “mutilation” of his memoirs. Publishing was difficult, and corners had to be cut. Some of Santayana’s remarks, seemed to his editors, and even to Santayana, too hard or too frank for the times. The publishers feared lawsuits, and Santayana was concerned that his friends and family might be upset. As a result, editors were charged with “softening” the text as well as deleting material difficult to print in restrictive times (for example, 717 marginal headings). On October 14, 1941, Santayana, then nearly eighty years old, found refuge in a convent-​clinic in Rome. The war cut him off from the United States, from his financial resources, and from his publishers. Not until the liberation of Rome did Santayana see a copy of the earliest book of his autobiography. Similarly, he saw the second book only after it was published in 1945. Unable to read the galleys or proofs for any of the publication, he could only chide his publishers and editors for the state of his autobiography, and he did so with his usual ironic wit. Santayana to Cory, March 14, 1945: “I see by your letter of Jan. 29th, that you have been officially debasing my pure and legitimate English to conform with the vernacular.”10 On April 8, 1945, Santayana says that Wheelock of Scribner’s has promised him “English spelling” in volume two and that “ultimately all three volumes will be bound in one.” But that, he says, “is not at all my dream of the final illustrated and completed edition!… You must manage to have, some day, an edition deluxe, to appease my Shade.”11 To Otto Kyllmann on August 23, 1947, Santayana says, “I wrote these memoirs intending them to 9

The first full account of the conveying of these transcripts from Rome to New York is given in the new critical edition of Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, 591–​98. 10 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Seven 1941–​1947, ed. William G. Holzberger, 136. 11 Ibid., 146.

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be posthumous; when circumstances led me to publish them, I made some excisions.”12 And throughout it all his ironic sense of humor had its say: “I counted on dying, so that my indiscretions would all have acquired the impersonal authority of historical documents. I rely on Scribner to issue an edition deluxe eventually, if they think they can make money out of it. My idea had been, on the contrary, to help finance an edition that would have been a work of art.”13 But in earnest, he repeatedly expressed his hope for a grander, unexpurgated edition. 3

Final Intentions and Santayana’s Autobiography

Santayana’s final intentions for his autobiography can be descriptively categorized as (1) documented, (2) demonstrated, and (3) partial. 3.1 Documented Intentions His documented final intentions are those found in such sources as letters, annotations to his copies of the published work, and errata lists. For example, all of Santayana’s marginal notes or headings (he refers to them as marginal comments) were omitted from all published versions except the recent critical edition. Probably the difficulty of setting type for these headings was a principal reason for eliminating what had been an accepted nineteenth-​to early twentieth-​century publishing practice. Santayana repeatedly asks in letters to friends and to his publishers that the marginal headings be reinstated in any future editions. They never were, though the first part of the autobiography went through numerous reprints—​it was a Book of the Month Club best-​seller—​and there was a new edition of the work published in celebration of Santayana’s one hundredth birthday. Santayana’s dedicated intention to include the headings is well documented. In addition, the actual placement and format of the headings is chronicled in Santayana’s correspondence with his American publisher, Scribner’s, and with his English publisher, Constable. In 1896, The Sense of Beauty was published with the marginal headings appearing to the flush left or right of their corresponding paragraph, depending on whether they were on the verso or recto page. On June 20, 1896, Santayana explicitly requested that this pattern be abandoned for left-​hand appearances only. When the Triton edition of his works began appearing in 1936, Scribner’s

12 Ibid., 365. 13 Ibid., 376.

158 Chapter 11 suggested that the marginal headings be removed from the left-​hand margins and placed at the beginning of the respective paragraphs, similar to chapter headings. Scribner’s recommendation was probably the result of considerations for typesetting ease. At first, Santayana thought these headings deserved such prominent placement, and he praised Scribner’s foresight. However, after the publication of the centered headings, he abandoned his support for this new placement and requested that his volumes retain the left-​hand marginal “comments” instead of “headings” as in the Triton edition. As noted earlier, another example of documented intentions is Santayana’s usage of British spelling and punctuation. In 188914 Santayana adopted the British forms and repeatedly requested that his publishers, both American and British, use the British forms. Not until he was a widely recognized author could he persuade the American publishers to honor his wishes, as in the Triton edition, for example (but only in the spelling, and then not fully consistently). The effect of his clear and repeated intentions on his American publisher was tied directly to his public standing as a writer and philosopher. From the 1920s through the 1930s his public recognition increased considerably. His public status was firmly established when he appeared on the front of Time in 1936 and when, in 1944–​45, his autobiography was one of the best-​ sellers in America. Only then did his American publishers begin to publish his works with British spelling. 3.2 Demonstrated Intentions When there is no documented evidence for authorial intention, one may convincingly determine authorial intention by a careful examination of authorial practice. Here, the necessity for data and good judgement must be emphasized. This is not a place for one and one-​half truths, that is, a place where an editor makes a judgement about what a reading ought to be, beyond the limits of evidence. The use of computers and available software programs such as Word Cruncher and the Oxford Concordance Program makes it possible to demonstrate authorial practices in an easier and more readily accessible manner than ever before. In examining Santayana’s holograph, the following examples of authorial practice can be demonstrated. Santayana carefully distinguishes between “forever” (continually) and “for ever” (always). This distinction is uniform throughout the holograph, but the publishing convention was to collapse this distinction to “forever.” Santayana also distinguished carefully between “whiskey” 14

See John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1987), 360.

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(Irish, U.S.) and “whisky” (Scotch). Interestingly, in conjunction with proper names Santayana used the American form of the initial capital in “Aunt” or “Uncle” when speaking of his American family, but he followed the Spanish form of not capitalizing “aunt” or “uncle” when referring to his Spanish family: “aunt Marquita” and “uncle Nicolas Santayana.” Although his publishers followed house style and uniformly capitalized “Aunt” and “Uncle” in conjunction with proper names, the evidence that these forms were not his normal practice is apparent in the holograph. Perhaps one can make the claim that normal practice is related to intention in a manner similar to the relation between habitual action and intention. If I walk across the room, even though I am not conscious of all aspects of my doing so, I can still be said to have intended to go across the room. In part because they are habitual, the precise forms of my walking (gait, speed, etc.) may not have been individually intended, but I did intend to walk and therefore in some sense determined the individual forms. This suggestion is not without its difficulties. The relationship between habitual action and intention is by no means clear, nor is the relationship between habitual action and intention, then the term final intention may not seem out of place in describing the writing habits of an author. But if one is inclined to deny such intention in habitual acts, then the term is likely to strike one as inappropriate. Another descriptive classification may be called indirect demonstration. For example, all references to Spinoza were omitted from Santayana’s autobiography. Santayana’s comments about Spinoza were critical, but he also praises Spinoza as “my master and model.” Santayana’s intention to have the sections on Spinoza published can be documented by their appearance in the holograph. And even though these sections were omitted from all published forms, one can infer from Santayana’s letters that he intended them to be published in the final “unexpurgated” edition of his autobiography. He repeatedly notes that he would like the omitted passages to be published, though he does not specifically mention the Spinoza sections, and he frequently comments that the holograph is to be used as the basis for a “good illustrated and unexpurgated edition of the whole three parts”15 of his autobiography. 3.3 Partial Intentions In some instances Santayana’s intentions are explicit but incomplete. For example, Santayana wrote a chapter titled “We Were Not Virtuous” about his

15

This quote is cited in a letter from Harry A. Freidenberg to John Hall Wheelock, 16 October 1952, in the archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

160 Chapter 11 family, and he expressly intended it not be published until after his death. Although a part of the holograph, it was not included in any published form until the critical edition. However, Santayana’s intention for the exact placement of this chapter in the holograph is not clear. It stands alone as an unnumbered chapter, and in the Columbia University collection it is physically located between c­ hapters 12 and 13. It is not clear whether this location was by Santayana’s design or a happenstance of the transfer of the holograph from Santayana to Cory to Columbia. Because it is not numbered as a chapter (although it is titled as one) and its content does not seem to belong between ­chapters 12 (“First Friends”) and 13 (“The Harvard Yard”), the editors decided to include it as an addendum to the first part of the autobiography. That it should be published is clearly demonstrated in Santayana’s correspondence, but where it belongs was only partially, and, for the editors, unclearly, designated.16 3.4 Conclusions Because of the dialectical interplay between authorial final intentions and the social context for writing and publishing a book, one cannot understand the concept of final intentions or the concept of social context in isolation: these notions are distinguishable in thought but not separable in activity. Indeed, the social context for writing and publishing a book places extreme importance on the role of authorial intentions. The Greg-​Bowers-​Tanselle tradition of final intentions offers a pragmatic solution to the problems of establishing an accurate and documented text. This solution can be turned into ideological cant but need not be. Its proper aim is to provide a paradigm whose interpretive value is established by its fruitfulness. The paradigm of final intentions is not a categorical principal applying to all cases and circumstances. Its limits are those of evidence and of relevance: are there documents and evidentiary bases for determining what an author intended the form and content of his work to be? Are the considered and final judgements of the writer of central importance for the final form and content of the work? The paradigm has apparent value when applied to the works of a single author, particularly nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century writers for whom a scholar may gather considerable evidence for documenting, demonstrating, or

16

See the critical edition of Persons and Places, 610–​11, for a discussion of this. This chapter was probably omitted from publication because of its unattractive portrayal of Santayana’s half-​brother, Robert Sturgis.

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inferring the mature and considered authorial judgements. Correspondence, annotations, publisher’s files, and other records indicating writing habits and style provide an evidentiary base for decisions in modern, critical editing. The value of the paradigm diminishes as the evidentiary base or the relevance of authorial intentions declines. In cases where there is little or no evidence to distinguish such intentions from the historical/​social context of publishing, the paradigm may be of little value. The paradigm also seems less applicable to performance-​oriented publications such as plays, operas, and ballads. Here the historical and social context is usually the more dominant factor in determining the final form and content of a work. The original author’s final intentions, if they can be determined at all, may be of literary and historical interest, but they may not have the central import for the final form and content of the work in the way they would for a published book by a single author. Santayana’s work serves as a prime example for the application of the paradigm. Spending the last forty years of his life as a dedicated full-​time writer, Santayana was careful to document his intentions. Because much of his correspondence, personal library, manuscripts, notes, and publisher’s files has been preserved, the scholarly editor has information rarely available in such abundance. This is not to say that establishing the text for Santayana’s work is not routinely complex and difficult, but that after disciplined and consistent research, a scholar can normally provide reasonable justification for decisions about the content and form of Santayana’s works based on the evidence available. 3.5 Recommendation All critical editors must wonder if their editorial judgements actually correspond with the author’s intentions. Most of us have at one time or another fantasized about being able to present crucial editorial questions to our authors, but unfortunately this is not an option for any critical editions now underway because the authors are no longer living. I recommend that the textual societies in conjunction with other professional associations consider proposing critical editions for eminent scholars who are now living. Such editions would employ all modern editorial practices in determining the form and content of the text, but the author would be able to make decisions concerning the final nature of these editions. Such editions would permit the eminent scholar to clear up matters that may have long plagued the publishing history of her or his work, and it would bring out variants that the author has been indifferent to. Furthermore, the determination of variants between editions and impressions may be a matter of appropriate

162 Chapter 11 computer software and compatibility because many contemporary texts are already on magnetic tapes. This recommendation may seem a natural outgrowth of critical editing, but its implication and value are not fully clear. Could such editions even be classified as critical editions? The term critical implies that editorial judgements have been made in determining the text, but in the proposed editions, these judgments would be augmented and possibly overridden by those of the author. Perhaps these editions could be called critical authorial editions, and would they be closer to the paradigm of modern critical editions? The role of the editor would certainly be altered, however. The editor’s scholarly abilities would still play a marked role in the quality and content of the editions, but would the editor not be more like scholarly copyeditor? The author’s involvement could result in editions that should be considered distinct from previously published editions—​horizontal editions, as Tanselle refers to them. This would certainly change the nature of editions, but it could further scholarship in a dramatic and engaging manner. How would specific authors be chosen for critical authorial editions? No simple question, but perhaps various professional organizations could be asked to propose and support editions for the leading figures in their fields. No doubt this could lead to considerable partisan heat, but already there are examples of comparable efforts,17 and most scholars can provide a listing of the top figures in their discipline. The problem of the judgement of history is perhaps a more serious difficulty. We may be able to arrive at a judicious consensus regarding contemporary eminent scholars, but will our present judgement stand through the rapidly changing methodologies, approaches, and focuses of our disciplines? Although the import of the recommendation for critical authorial editions is not fully clear, I believe it is worth considering even if it serves only to highlight the differences between the role of editors in critical editions as opposed to critical authorial editions. 17

For example, The Library of Living Philosophers.

­c hapter 12

The Santayana Edition, Philosophical Texts and Principles: Corps-​Text vs. Copy-​Text In the beginning of the science-​fiction movie, 2001, a not fully erect, apelike figure discovers that a discarded bone can be used as a weapon.1 Power and leadership are his first prizes and, ultimately, he uses the bone as a murder weapon. In the supreme delight of the kill, he hurls the marrow-​of-​life now turned weapon into the air. As the bone spins against the background of the sky, the music of Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra envelops the scene, the highest human sophistication is now at hand, and the bone is transformed into a futuristic space station inhabited by individuals on a mysterious mission. I have a vision of the future editor/​scholar modeled after the beginning of 2001. The scholarly edition of 3001 (things have a slower pace in textual editing) goes as follows. Imagine a textual scholar, bent over a copy-​text, surrounded by different editions and their impressions, leafing through a variants list of several hundred pages, wondering if years of editorial service will result in significant scholarly benefit. The scholar is trying to find one reference, which is remembered from work three years earlier. The intransigence of the hard-​copy pages leads the editor to search intently but fruitlessly through stacks of paper. Finally, after three days of searching for this small item, it is found! In joy, the editor hurls the copy-​text into the air; it spins against the backdrop of the books on shelves and is enveloped in the music of Beethoven’s last piano sonata, Opus 111. The copy-​text is transformed dramatically into magnificently colored electronic bits, soaring by in a multilevel, interconnected grid woven with never-​ending threads of electronic light, each fused where they cross (similar to the penultimate scene in 2001). The textual scholar is surrounded by keyboards, screens, and audio systems. By voice the system is brought to life. Every stage and version of the text is immediately available to the scholar, along with any combination or organization of the text. All historical notes and discussions are also immediately

1 Based on a paper “Technology and the Sociology of Texts,” previously presented at the conference on (Re)producing Texts/​(Re)presenting History held at Texas A&M University, 29 September 1989, and sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Group for Historical and Literary Studies.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_015

164 Chapter 12 accessible, linked to each textual item, and interconnected. But there is much more as well. Working on an autobiography, the scholar discovers the author attended a performance of Verdi’s Requiem in the Dome at Brighton, England. On request, the system plays Part vii, Libera Me. The screens in front display the chorus, soloist, and orchestra chosen by the scholar. Curious, the scholar learns that this piece originally was composed to commemorate the death of Rossini (1868), but the full requiem (by thirteen Italian composers, each contributing one section of the work, the whole to be performed once and then sealed in the archives of the Milan Conservatory) was never completed. But when Alessandro Manzoni (the Italian poet, novelist and patriot) died in Milan on May 22, 1873, Verdi resolved to create a memorial. Finishing Aida, Verdi turned to work on the Manzoni Requiem, which was first performed in Milan a year after the death of Manzoni. Before the year was out, there were three additional performances at La Scala, Paris, and London. Accessing information about the Dome, the editor discovers the architectural plans for the building, reads about its history, the relation to the royal family, its reconstruction in the 1980s. Politically aware, the editor learns of the ira bombing in the nearby seashore hotel. Like a child with a video game or a scholar with seemingly unlimited resources funded by the ably led and the future well-​endowed neh, the editor’s pursuits go wherever scholarly curiosity leads. For scholars and academics, such a scene is unlikely in the near future, although it may be considerably closer for major decision-​making centers in government, law, and business. But in academia there are promised horizons that seem as far off now as they were ten or fifteen years ago, and, at times, the pledges of artificial intelligence appear to produce more artificial intelligentsia than anything else. However, this image of a body of text, interconnected with every possible source of information, is my image of the text. Presently most texts are encased in books, linear from front to back, but there is no reason to assume that future texts will have the same instantiation. I call this image of a text the corporate-​text or the corps-​text. 1

Corps-​Text vs. Copy-​Text

Significant contrasts exist between the corps-​text approach and that of copy-​ text theory identified with the Greg, Bowers, and Tanselle. I call this a contrast between copy-​text (core-​text) versus the corps-​text (corporate text) view. Although I  am not inextricably wedded to the term corps-​text to describe the currently developing view of a text as a dynamic social product, I believe it is

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worth consideration. Corps-​text provides a visual contrast to copy-​text, and it provides a verbal similarity as well as contrast to the meaning of core-​text. Both copy-​text and corps-​text theories match the intellectual and technological climates of their historical periods. The copy-​text approach is nourished by a publishing industry that largely depends on individual authors to initiate works. Within this environment, publishers should further the intentions of the authors by their collaborative work, rather than diverting or harming the author’s work through intentional changes or unintentional printing errors. However, a corps-​text approach is supported by an environment that highlights the social influences of all individual events, including the writing of a book. The corps-​text approach flourishes when the economic and intellectual focuses are on the collaboration of equals, where individual and collective effect may vary significantly from one setting to another, and where there is an intellectual and scientific appreciation of these multi-​faceted social forces. As a result, one might identify the copy-​text approach with the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries when scholarly and scientific emphasis was placed on the role of individuals in society. The corps-​text approach is a late twentieth century phenomenon, substantially influenced by a new understanding of the cultural and biological leverage on individual actions. It is not surprising that such a view of the text should occur in a period following Marx, Freud, Einstein, and the development of sociology, neurophysiology, genetics, and bioengineering. For some, the copy-​text approach appears to have reached its zenith and, perhaps, its culmination in the last decade; it seems no longer suited to the substantial new understandings of the underlying bases of human action. However, it seems as if the corps-​text approach has yet to be fully developed. Neither publishing technology nor editorial scholarship has produced the material or the pragmatism fully to support the study and understanding of textual materials in a socially complex environment. The central focus of modern editing is to provide the best available textual materials for scholarly research and, when appropriate, for the general reader. The central difficulty facing an editor is establishing a basis for making reasoned judgments concerning variant readings in the textual material. Both the copy-​text and corps-​text approaches attempt to meet these issues. 2

Copy-​Text (Core-​Text)

The copy-​text approach provides a pragmatic solution for editorial judgments. Briefly, it rests on the foundational claims that intentions are coupled with

166 Chapter 12 responsibility for actions and that an author is principally responsible for the form and content of her or his work. Several points emerge: 1. The author’s responsibility for substantive content (words) is usually more distinct than for form. 2. The author’s responsibility for form is normally sharper for accidentals (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, word division, paragraphing, and devices of emphasis) than for the presentational format of the work (type style, binding, single or double columns). 3. Because of the relationship between intentions and the author’s responsibilities, there is normally greater evidence for authorial intentions concerning substantive changes in a text than for changes in accidentals and presentational format. 4. Therefore, the sage advice for an editor is to choose a base text (the copy-​ text) that most accurately records authorial intentions that are not otherwise well documented, that is, the text that most accurately reflects the author’s accidentals. 5. Ironically, the copy-​text focus on individual authors and their final intentions leads scholarly editors to choose copy-​texts that most assure the accuracy of the least-​documented final intentions. The copy-​text approach is congruent with the dominant view of individuality found in the last two centuries, a view supported by philosophical and religious outlooks. If the individual is viewed as an independent, causal agent in the natural world, then one needs to explain how societies are formed and why free and rational individuals would choose to be a part of them. Any social standing must be reducible, in some fashion, to the collective choice of individuals. The Cartesian view of the individual as a non-​natural agent in a physical world underlies the copy-​text approach, as does the capitalistic notion of a rational, self-​interested economic person (as developed by Adam Smith). Defining the human self as distinct from the physical world provides a conceptual foundation for contrasting the author’s intentions with social and environmental circumstances. The copy-​text approach attempts to preserve the purity of authorial intentions in contrast to the external constraints of the publishing and reading environment. This approach has familiar echoes in the religious doctrine of the purity of soul achieved in a changing, decaying material world. It also reflects the idea of capitalistic entrepreneurship where external constraints are to be severely limited if one is to achieve the good of each individual in society. The technology developed for mass production of textual materials (books, journals, and other periodicals) reinforces this view of individual intentions

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and responsibility. The covers of books highlight the titles of the works and the authors. In contrast, publishers and printers get bottom-​of-​the-​page or second-​ page billing. It is as if authors, struggling against time, technology, and natural restraints, produce books that mirror their intentions, but only after much effort and good fortune. Without concerted effort and good fortune, the result is fractured by the limitations of the publishing environment, e.g., alterations of text forced by convention or by accident. Therefore, the editor’s task is to determine the timeline and details of the author’s intentions for a text and to preserve the authorial final intentions as nearly as possible. All this results in a linear view of a text and of authorial intentions. Authorial intentions determine, or should determine, the content and form of a work. The linear history of the intentions is coextensive with the life of the author. There may be original intentions, intermediate, and final ones, and the work is complete when the author has no further intentions regarding it. The textual scholar must delineate these intentions by careful study of variants and textual evidence (every edition and every impression, pre-​copy-​text forms, publishing records, authors’ correspondence, etc.). Then the editors of critical editions make their best, evidentiary judgment regarding which variants are in accord with the author’s final intentions. These are critical editions because the editors make critical judgments about the text. They document decisions that differ from the copy-​text, thereby providing a basis for other readers to assess the judgment of the editor. Because of its simple clarity and pragmatic value, the copy-​text approach to editorial policy and practice has been remarkably productive. By providing a copy-​text (a text that serves as the basis for editorial decisions) a ground is furnished for reasoned judgment as well as for difference of opinion regarding editorial conclusions. However, its applicability and pragmatic value have limits. As Jerry McGann2 makes clear, these limits are highlighted in performance-​ oriented works such as operas, plays, and ballads where the intentions of the authors, whether original or final, often have less textual significance than the social conventions and circumstances that determine the substance and form of the works. For example, the final intentions of Verdi regarding Aida may be far less significant than the particular interpretation of a performer that has now become standard. The author’s intentions, final or not, are but one historical aspect of the performance of the opera. But performance-​oriented texts are not the only limits to the theory of copy-​text.

2 Jerome J. McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

168 Chapter 12 Of course, deciding the meaning of the term intentions is difficult. Is this a term that has exact meaning or, at least, meaning that will lead to clear limits of evidence and force of argument? Is it a term that can be separated from the subjective, perhaps undocumentable, aspects of an author’s life? For some scholars, these are good questions that continue to foster further explication and research, but often copy-​text theorists respond in a more pragmatic and less philosophical fashion. They maintain that the benefit of providing an evidentiary base for editorial decisions is the unique contribution of copy-​text theory. All editorial decisions are not only discoverable but also challengeable based on the evidence provided. This claim clearly highlights an important contribution of this approach, but it also points to limitations. The availability of evidence for deciding an author’s intentions may severely limit the applicability of this approach. Choosing a copy-​text based on the least-​ documented intentions of the author may leave one in difficult straits if there is little documentation regarding the intentions of the author for the substance and form of the work. The copy-​text approach seems particularly helpful with late nineteenth and twentieth century works where there is often considerable evidence for the intent of authors through letters, holographs, publishers’ files, annotations, etc. But wherever the evidence for authorial intentions is limited or the interplay between social context and production is more pronounced than is allowed in copy-​text policy, there is a breakdown of applicability. As a result, many editorial scholars are searching for a more dynamic approach that has greater applicability and pragmatic value. I call this the corps-​text approach. 3

Corps-​Text

The term corps or corporate brings forward the notion of social groups in which individuals are parts of a whole; the central idea is the forming of one body constituted by many elements or individuals. A corps de ballet is the company of individual dancers. The diplomatic corps (corps diplomatique) is the body of ambassadors assigned to a particular capital. The corps of cadets is a group of students organized into a military unit, and one can characterize the unity and common interests of a group by reference to the esprit de corps. The corps-​text is brought to life in the history and social context of the work; instead of linear, it is a dynamic and process-​oriented approach to texts. In

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one of his novels, Kurt Vonnegut3 presents an image of a person seen through time; it is a millipede image. What we see first are the feet of the newly born child, and the last feet are those of the person at the point of death. And all this is seen at once. But such an image of a person or of a text is still too linear. It compresses the linear process to one point, noting the linkages forward and backward, but what about the sense of a work as a part of a field of experience with forces working from every direction—​the sense suggested by the Jerry McGann’s term radiating text? (The difficulty I have with the term ‘radiating text’ is its basic image from physics—​it lacks emphasis on the human aspect of a body of text.) Some Western and Eastern notions capture this aspect. From the time of Aristotle we have held that all true statements logically imply each other. Therefore, logical interconnection unites all truth claims, an interconnection that is as intricate and convoluted as all truth relations. In the Eastern thought, there is a nonlinear image of the universe found in Hua-​yen Buddhism. In the abode of the god Indra there is a net that stretches infinitely in all directions, with jewels in each “eye” of the net. The polished surfaces of each jewel reflect all the other jewels in the net, and each jewel in the reflection also mirrors all the other jewels. Since the net is infinite, so are the jewels. This presents an image of an infinitely repeated interrelationship between all aspects of the universe.4 Editorial scholars have tried to capture this sense of the text in their textual apparatuses. Here the historical stemma of the work can be traced, and with some imagination the creative interplay between author and social conventions can be demonstrated. For example, in editing George Santayana’s autobiography, Persons and Places, I was surprised to find that all mention of Spinoza had been deleted from the published texts. Spinoza and Aristotle are the two principal influences in Santayana’s philosophy. How could passages on Spinoza be systematically eliminated from Santayana’s published autobiography when they were a part of the original holograph sent to the publisher? The circumstances enable one to understand what may have happened. When Santayana was nearly eighty years old and trapped in Rome by World War ii, he began to pull together his autobiography, based on his memory and on notes taken over many years. In his holograph, he writes about his philosophical debt to Spinoza, noting that Spinoza stands first among philosophers in understanding the natural basis of morality but that Spinoza does not have 3 Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (New York: Dell, 1963). 4 I am grateful to Joel Smith, Skidmore College, for this image. Further discussion of it may be found in Francis H. Cook, Hun-​yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State Press, 1977).

170 Chapter 12 a sympathetic intelligence that appreciates all the “types of excellence toward which life may be directed.”5 Santayana is concerned that he had not made this distinction clear in his accounts of Spinoza, and he wants to clear up any ambiguity about his assessment. He says, “I will take this opportunity, since I may not have any other, of clearing my conscience of ambiguity in that respect.”6 What follows is Santayana’s final summation of Spinoza, which ends:  “The saint and the poet are hardly sane or authoritative unless they embody a wide tradition. If they are rebels, disinherited and solitary, the world may admire but cannot follow them. They have studied human nature by looking at the stars.”7 By a diligent reading of the text and the Textual Apparatus, one can learn that the Spinoza material was omitted from all previously published versions. From the Textual Commentary one can detect some reasons for the omissions and begin to build a sense of the history and drama of the production of this text. But the Textual Apparatus is not a very adaptable method of displaying the dynamic quality of a text. It is too stagnant, too fixed, too difficult to follow. It is too linear, front to back, like the format of a book. To detect that the Spinoza passages were omitted from previous publications of Santayana’s autobiography, one has to read not only the text but the Textual Apparatus (complicated at first sight) and then search through, or read fully, the Textual Commentary. For many scholars the electronic text appears to have greater potential for describing the social and dynamic nature of the text. Partly because electronic texts are more accessible, their social character takes on more importance. A text may be the work of a single author, but the history of that work, of the author, of each letter, structure the meaning of the text. An electronic text, incorporating all its past and present textual relations, is more like a process than a static copy-​text. It is a social product in which individuals play central roles but not in isolation. It is organic, moving in stages, and developing. Although its chronology may coincide with that of the author, the lines of influence and authority are not linear; they are multidimensional. The likelihood of focusing on one form of the text as the basic text is small if all forms of the text are immediately available and can be structured in any fashion wanted by the scholar. The choice of text depends on the interests, arbitrary or disciplined, of the reader. The idea of a diplomatic text, which originated in copy-​text theory, can be extended to the corps-​text since each reader

5 George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, eds. Herman J. Saatkamp and William G. Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 1986), 235. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 236.

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of the electronic text can create their own diplomatic corps-​text by selecting the text and variants they wish. Will this mean that the notion of authorial intentions, so important for copy-​text theory, vanishes in corps-​text theory? No. As in the new Chaos science there is a sensitive dependence on original conditions, and the intentions of the author are significant parts of the original conditions. This sensitive dependence on original conditions can be understood through the analogy of a ball balanced on a pyramid-​type structure. Any small force will cause a dramatic effect: the ball will fall from the top. Authorial intentions, even small and seemingly inconsequential ones, may greatly affect the outcome of the body of text. But so may any of the other original conditions (language, publisher, government, friends, intellect, national security) as well as the developing environmental structure. 4

Conclusion

What stands between us and the corps-​text approach is technology, resources, and a coherent theory. One can expect that each of these will be coming in the future, and that future generations may enjoy a far more complex approach to a text than has been possible in the last few centuries. If this occurs, the role of the critical editor is in question. Is there a need for the editor, if one can present all textual evidence in an electronic text without attempting to decide which of the variants are authorial or not? That is, can we not now present a Bacon-​like text with all available evidence accessible to the reader without making any editorial judgments about it, without prejudging what the reader should be reading? If we can, then the traditional role of the critical editor is removed from scholarship, and scholarly editors will become an endangered species replaced by archivists and historians. There are two reasons why this seems unlikely to me. First, archivists and historians make judgments about what to include in their collections and their histories. These judgments can be informed by those of the critical editor. Second, the need for critical editing is more likely to be strengthened by the corps-​text approach than weakened. This may seem paradoxical, but it is not. Complex textual terrains require intellectual road maps, and scholarly editors are in the best position to author such textual guides. The centrality of the editor in the copy-​text approach is based on discerning the intentions of the author and on safeguarding them from corruption. It results in a final, eclectic text that may be quite different from previously published versions because of the scholarly judgment of the editor. Obviously, if

172 Chapter 12 the author’s intentions and the critical editor’s judgments are simply elements among many constituent components of a text, the corps-​text editor will not have a singular editorial beacon for making editorial judgments. Such an editor cannot justify editorial decisions and explanations based on the singular need to preserve authorial intentions; indeed, the complexity of the corps-​text will call for adaptable and informed judgments that can stand up to the complexity of the textual environment. No longer can one simply omit or select material for inclusion because it is consonant with some authorial intent. No longer can one merely provide explanations, identifications, and content based solely on the primary study of an author’s life and the history of a particular text. The reach of the critical editor is now much broader. The reader who comes to an electronic text may first wish to have a clear text, one free of editorial markings and explanations. This text should be provided by a critical editor, and, in the cases of single author volumes, the corps-​ text editor likely will provide a clear text identical or very similar to that of a copy-​text editor. This agreement is based on the social centrality of the author in the production of a text. As a reader’s interest in the text increases, the corps-​text editor’s notes, explanations, chronologies, and variants become even more significant. Hence, the role of the editor becomes both more complex and necessary as the textual terrain becomes more inclusive, less guided by single principles, and more realistic in assessing the multi-​faceted influences that culminate in a given text.

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The Editor and Technology 1

Practices

At present, the practices of modern scholarly editing are clearly enhanced by advances in technology. As a textual scholar, I am amazed that extensive and lifelong editing projects occurred before the age of electronic data processing. Much of the work that would take months or years to accomplish can now be done in days, hours, or sometimes minutes. But this enhancement has yet to alter the basic practices, standards, or understanding of scholarly editing. The reason for this is simple: we utilize the technology to augment an established tradition of editing procedures. Technology quickens the pace of our work, enables us to have several extensive and detailed projects going at once, but it has not challenged the basic structure or pattern of what we do. Our model, even for computer-​enhanced editing, is still associated with hard copy, hand-​or type-​written notes, and collation processes that involve reading and comparing material. In terms of technology we have not come far enough to alter genuinely the process or to reshape dramatically our conception of what we are doing. We are all grateful for the help, but I, for one, hope for far more significant changes to occur. 1.1 Nonscholarly Activity Progress is being made at specific centers of editing activity. I am thinking of the work at the University of South Carolina (David Chestnutt, Robert Oakman) and that of Charles Cullen and others. But it is also important to note that we are beginning to benefit from the textual needs of other professions, some far more influential than ourselves. In particular, legal, corporate, and governmental offices are beginning to focus on the needs for manipulation of textual material, and as a result, there is a chance that the next revolution in software and hardware may be textually oriented. 1.1.1 Legal Profession 1.1.1.1 WordPerfect 5.0, Compare The need to establish differences in legal documents led WordPerfect corporation to develop a new function in its 5.0 Version: compare. This function

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174 Chapter 13 permits one to compare one document against another. Any difference will be indicated by the legal practice of “strike-​outs” and “redlining” indicating a substitution of one sentence for another. Can you tale where this sentence differs from the next? Can you tell where this sentence differs from the next? This is handy for finding sentences in which textual differences occur, but the complete sentence or phrase is marked and not the individual differences. The program captures all substantive and accidental differences. However, it will not note a difference in the number of hard carriage returns between paragraphs. 1.1.2 Oxford English Dictionary The collaboration between Oxford University and the University of Waterloo has produced a model for complex, textual databases. The compact disc version of the Oxford English Dictionary is a marvel. Compared with the incredible difficulties in turning pages and critically examining all entries of a term, the new method permits almost immediate location of terms and a very quick examination of the different senses. Furthermore, if one is curious, one can find every quote from a particular author, or every reference to a particular term, and one can do this with incredible speed and ease. We are beginning to realize the need for storage and access of large textual databases. Annually, and International Database Conference for the Humanities and Social Sciences is held alternately in the United States and in Europe. Such a meeting highlights the growing use of databases in our fields as well as the urgency for clear and effective communication in the scholarly world. 1.2 Scholarly 1.2.1 Electronic Mail Many of us begin every day answering electronic mail. It is a marvel to receive mail, to reply immediately, and to have one’s response received within a matter of seconds. At Texas A&M University, I begin each day with emails from the United States, Canada, and Europe. Soon we expect to have a connection with Fudan University in China. 1.2.2 Electronic Publishing Many of us are actively engaged in electronic publishing. The whole of the Santayana Edition is produced in this fashion. We transcribe all material with printing codes embedded in the text. When time comes for publication, the electronic files are sent to our printer, who first transform any generic codes we have used to the technical codes for the printing system and then runs galley

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copies for us. The turnaround time is approximately two weeks even for large texts. The new procedure places far more control of the printing process in the hands of the scholar/​editor, and it removes the complaint of intervention by publishers and copy editors. It also greatly enhances the accuracy of the textual scholarship as well as the ability to check immediately and find any textual material associated with the critical edition. Of course, such a process also introduces new problems associated with the accuracy of electronic transmission, coding inconsistencies, difficulties of incompatible systems, and problems of communication of technical information between an editor and printer not to mention the publisher. One particularly nice benefit of electronic publishing is that the electronic files permit far easier access to the text than does the hard copy. Having completed the first three volumes of The Works of George Santayana, we now have the text and apparatus available to us in an electronic format. This means we can take advantage of new electronic programs for analyzing texts as well as simply locating, copying, and using the text with much greater ease in our own scholarly research. 1.2.3 Library of America (WordCruncher) Daniel Aaron’s Library of America series is now being made available through WordCruncher. This is a program originally developed at Brigham Young University for building textual concordances. The Mormons were interested in an easy but sophisticated method for studying biblical material, and they developed this program, first called the byu Concordance. It is remarkably useful. At the Santayana Edition, we have copies of Emerson’s work, the King James Version of the Bible, and some of Shakespeare’s plays. Apart from the delight of having all this material ready at hand in electronic form, we are able to locate nonreferenced quotes in Santayana’s quotes almost immediately. Santayana’s habit of quoting from memory and perhaps only mentioning the author of the quote, has caused us to spend many hours trying to identify and locate the source of the quote as well as to check its accuracy. 1.3 Quotidian Editing The effect of technology on the quotidian aspect of computer editing is hardly visionary. We spend our days learning new software, developing new skills, evaluating hardware, wrestling with compatibility problems, working on maintenance of systems, training staff and faculty, securing data and the accuracy of the editing process, and working with an array of individuals in other disciplines who rarely understand and sometimes do not appreciate what we are about. Along with this comes the decentralizing of the editing tasks: the

176 Chapter 13 responsibilities for the final product are more significantly dependent on the editor’s technological and scholarly proficiencies. When we finish, we have a published, hard-​copy product, but we also have the work in electronic form that often, too often, is stored on a shelf as an archive rather than actively used for further scholarly inquiry. Throughout the process we are increasingly aware that readers will have little access to the wealth of background information requisite for producing even the shortest volume via modern textual editing practices. 2

Conceptual Changes

The general theme of this section is the intransigence of books versus the adroitness of data. Perhaps it is particularly odd for those of us in the seeming position of preserving books to be denigrating them as obstacles to scholarly activity. But one conceptual change that may be occurring is the recognition of the difference between preserving textual data and preserving a particular form of it, i.e., hard-​copy books. If we begin to shift to the notion of textual data, our conceptions of access, ownership, structure, and even copy-​text, authorial intention, and social context may undergo dramatic shifts. 2.1 Access 2.1.1 Turning Pages/​Electronic Search There is an elementary aspect of electronic textual data. It causes one to shun, to look with disdain, on turning pages, examining indexes and finding references, looking for quotes that you know are on the upper-​right-​hand page somewhere near the middle of the book. All of the activities are time consuming, labor intensive, and take away from the general thrust of scholarship. With electronic data, they are gone. 2.1.2 Access Location/​Access Grid The importance of the location of a book at a particular place fades. Electronic data not only can be more easily located in many places, but access to the data is not dependent upon one being physically near the location. In some moments of fancy, I imagine turning on my computer and having available all the resources of Widener Library, Newberry Library, Huntington Library, the Library of Congress, the British Museum, etc. Technically, there is no reason why this cannot be done now, it is a matter of placing all this data in electronic form and creating the means of access—​no small task.

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2.2 Ownership Easy access usually means loss of privileged access and the loss of meaningful private ownership. If this is carried to the extreme, it would no doubt upset the current privatization of America. 2.2.1 Copyrights/​Electronic Access One can more easily protect copyrights when production is centralized and limited, when purchases are controlled by retailers and prices, and when access is limited by choice and finances. But if electronic data is by its nature more difficult to centralize and limit, more unlikely to be controlled by market conditions, and hence less limited by finances and choice than by skill and access, then the concept of ownership will have to change. Who owns the text? If the text is not bound to a particular format or form, it will be more difficult to determine the boundaries of ownership. 2.3 Linear Format/​Grid Structure 2.3.1 Organization: Books/​Electronic Data Books are organized in a linear fashion, front to back, sometimes with indexes that enable one to organize the material in a topical, forward and backward reading. This format is cumbersome for anyone who has worked with electronic data. Electronic data has little of the linear restrictions. The integrity of the linear text can be preserved if one wishes, but in addition one can organize the text around themes, lengths of sentences, use of conjunctions, use of punctuation, grammatical errors, quotations, allusions to the arts, or whatever principles seem to match one’s fancy at the time. One’s research interests are not restricted to a linear format or to graduate students counting occurrences of words, rather all textual material is available to one almost instantaneously—​ at least in contrast to thumbing through an unwieldly, letterpress, linear format. Electronic data can be organized into a grid structure where every point is a star burst connected to all other points. From the sentence, “Santayana was a Spaniard,” one cannot only learn about Santayana and Spain, but about architecture, literature, physics, poetry, etc., simply because they are all possibly related to the sentence or to a researcher’s interests. A rather trivial point of basic logic is that all true propositions imply all true propositions. It seems that our understanding of the world assumes that all true statements about data are interconnected. As the technical structures supporting knowledge come closer to modeling that assumed interconnection, we will more easily move from any one point on the knowledge grid to any other point. This is comparable to the image of the universe found in Hua-​yen Buddhism. In the abode of the god Indra there is a net that stretches infinitely

178 Chapter 13 in all directions, with jewels in each “eye” of the net. The polished surfaces of each jewel reflect all the other jewels in the net, and each jewel in the reflection also mirrors all other jewels. Since the net is infinite, so are the jewels. This is an image of an infinitely repeated interrelationship between all aspects of the universe.1 2.3.2 Character The character of a book is its printed pages: locatable, lexically ordered, transferable by photography perhaps. Electronic data is more analogous to music than to the page blocks of books. Any theme, conceptual, punctuational, forma or structural, can appear, be arranged, examined, turned, reversed, and, if wanted, restored to original order. Rather than a stair-​step approach to reading and understanding, one may have an approach that leaps forward and backward, pursues thematic structures rather than rigid linear formats. 2.4 The Sociology of Texts: Copy-​Text versus Corporate-​Text Partly because electronic texts are accessible, their social character may take on more importance. A text may be the clear work of single author, but the history of that work, of the author, of each word, of each letter, is bound to the meaning of the text. The corporate text is brought to life in the history and social context of the work. In one of his novels, Kurt Vonnegut presents an image of a person seen through time; it is a millipede image. What we see first are the feet of the newly born child; the last feet are those of the person at the point of death. An electronic text, truly incorporating all its past and present textual relations, is more like a process than a static copy-​text. It is more likely to be viewed as a social product than as that of a single individual. It is a process, organic, moving in stages, developing, and growing. The likelihood of focusing on one form of the text are immediately available and can be structured in any fashion desired by the scholar. 2.5 Intention/​Social Context Within this conception the central role of the author is not lost, but more significantly the author is seen as a central element within a social process. The individual characteristics of the author are not seen in isolation. They are part of a culture, a region, a family of characteristics. From any point in a text, even the point of a single punctuation mark. One can move on the textual grid to 1 I am grateful to Joel Smith, Skidmore College, for this image. A further discussion of it may be found in Francis H. Cook, Hua-​yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977).

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any other location, to any arrangement of the text, to any theme, or structure. The text can be compared and structured with that of any other text, including its own impressions as well as the editions of other works. It can be compared with compositions quite different in structure: music, math, biological growth, economic patterns, architecture, etc. Perhaps the text will become more like the art forms of operas and of ballads. The initial forms of a text may appear more like the isolated work of an individual writer, if one is careful to overlook the social dimensions of individuality, but the developing and current forms have a clear social extension beyond the individual author and the author’s past history. As a result, authorial intention, even if clearly defined and established, may be seen as one element, albeit an important one, in the millipede life of a text.

­c hapter 14

Private Rights vs. Public Needs 1

Scene One

Saturday morning, 6:30 a.m. The viper-​like hiss of the shower at the end of the hall awakens you. Who could be showering at this time? Surely none of the children have taken your long-​given advice about “early to bed, early to rise”; you turn and your spouse is lying beside you in the usual marital position of back towards partner. You are almost falling back to sleep, but the shower is turned off and unfamiliar rustling and steps are heard. Opening your bedroom door and peering down the hallway, you see emerging from the bath a complete stranger in a jogging outfit. Going out the side door he says, “This is really convenient. I run every Saturday morning and this is precisely the point where I need a fresh shower and change.” Exit jogger. 2

Scene Two

Saturday morning, 6:30 a.m. The doorbell rings, rings again, and again. From a deep sleep you move slowly for a robe, then negotiate the hallway to the front door. A young woman and an elderly man are standing on your doorstep. The woman says, “I am so sorry, but my father is sick and desperately needs to use a restroom, and yours is the only house close by. We were taking our usual morning walk. This has never happened before. Oh please, is it possible for us to impose on you?” End of Scene Two. 3

Personal Rights and Scholarly Editing

Most of us would be, at least, a bit puzzled and irritated by the jogger in Scene One, and some of us would be so highly offended that if the jogger came again, we would take some precautionary or legal action. Scene two brings a different response. We are not required to say “Yes” to the walkers, but there is a sense that we should or, at least, that it would be all right to say “Yes,” and for many there may be a sense that it would be wrong to say “No.” To help understand our reactions to the jogger and to the walkers, it is important to recognize that our notion of personal rights involves a sense both of

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privilege and of obligation. My right to own property carries with it the privilege of use and of privacy, and this privilege is coupled with a negative obligation that other people not interfere with my right. By imposing his convenience on our household facilities, the runner violates our right. By requesting help, the walkers honor our right. Whether we base individual rights in nature or consider them human constructs, the notion of personal rights has played a major role in the development of our industrial and informational societies. As editors, particularly when we are editing material that was never intended for public inspection (e.g., letters, diaries, marginalia, scribblings), we may sense that we are violating the rights of the authors or at least prying into matters that the author may have wanted to keep private. This sense is highlighted if an author has explicitly requested the material not be published, and we decide it should be. To some extent, this sense of violation may be raised even when we record alterations to a text, e.g., an alterations list or a transcription that includes material the author canceled so as not to be included in publication. This sense of violating personal rights may be particularly sharp in the W.  W. Greg-​Fredson Bowers-​G. Thomas Tanselle approach to textual scholarship. Here the focus on authorial intention and choice of copy-​text places the author in a privileged position. The principle task is to select the copy-​text normally closest to the author’s hand, and then to determine any emendation based on authorial intentions documented by evidence or well-​reasoned argument. Hence, the primacy of the author’s declared or demonstrated expectations may raise rather serious questions regarding any outright violation of the author’s expressed intentions. For example, if an author explicitly indicates certain material is never to be published, what is the editor’s appropriate response? Even if the editor decides not to include the material in the text of the published work, it may be included in the material in the text of the published work, it may be included or, at least, mentioned in a discussion of the history of the text. If the editor knows about this material but records no evidence of it, then is the editor not violating his or her obligations to the scholarly community? It is this sense of conflict that editors may feel and that authors sometimes worry over,1 the sense of private rights conflicting with public or scholarly needs, that I wish to address. My discussion is in two sections: individual rights and public needs. In the first, I examine the notion of authorial rights and, in 1 For example, see Frederick Busch, “Public or Purloined?:  Novelists’ Letters, Biographers’ Rights,” Harper’s Magazine, 279, no. 1671 (August 1989): 58–​61. Alfred North Whitehead also expressed concerns over this issue and asked his wife to destroy his papers after his death.

182 Chapter 14 particular, the way in which these rights are incorporated in the Greg-​Bowers-​ Tanselle approach to editing, an approach that is used in editing The Works of George Santayana. The second section provides a short examination of legal considerations but focuses primarily on the conditional or prima facie rights of authorship. In brief, I make a modest proposal: (1) that we are justified in being uneasy about prying into private lives and writings; (2) that our uneasiness is based on prima facie rights of the author, and (3) that there are justifications for overriding prima facie rights although it may not always be clear when we have such justification. I wish to avoid any discussion of the nature or basis of rights in general or even of the right of privacy. My discussion is not dependent on there being natural rights, nor does it fail if, as Jeremy Bentham says, the claim to natural rights is “nonsense on stilts.” I merely note that rights have played a central role in Western society since the eighteenth century, and whether justified or not, whether natural or not, we do have a sense of rights as one determining force in moral, political, and legal actions.2 More relevant to textual editing, I propose that the difficulties created by an overemphasis on the individual rights of authors is still another way of pointing out the need for consideration of social factors other than “authorial intention” when editing a text. 4

Individual Rights

4.1 Pragmatic Value of the Greg-​Bowers-​Tanselle Approach (gbt) There is little question that authorial intention has a primacy in editorial scholarship, but there is considerable question about the status of this primacy: is it absolute, applicable only in certain circumstances, or prima facie in all circumstances? Recent challenges to the Greg-​Bowers-​Tanselle approach to textual editing suggest that other considerations, societal in nature, vie with authorial primacy for central roles in editorial scholarship. At times, these other considerations may override the final intentions of an author or make the consideration or final intentions less significant, i.e., the prima facie or conditional rights of the author may be overridden in specific circumstances. In

2 In truth, I hold rights not to be natural but to be understandable constructs of human associations, and I also believe that one of the pressing needs of our time is to develop an ethic that recognizes rights that extend beyond the human family—​but that is another paper entirely.

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part, this debate may be seen as a conflict between the rights of an author versus the circumstances and needs of a society. The Greg-​Bowers-​Tanselle approach places the rights of an author in a far more central position than Jerome McGann’s socialized text or my corps-​text.3 As I understand it, neither McGann nor I are disputing the considerable value the copy-​text theory has brought to the editing of major writers. The pragmatic value of copy-​text theory is well demonstrated, but the question raised is whether copy-​text theory is the best way to conceive of the history of a text. Copy-​text theory is, in fact, the approach taken in editing The Works of George Santayana, and it seems quite suited for this application. Indeed, I do not know of a better pragmatic approach to editing works that were intended for publication, written by a single author, and where considerable evidence is available for determining authorial expectations (letters, marginalia, publishers’ files, etc.). Not placing authorial expectations in a central, almost absolute, position for such works can lead to editorial tragedies. We all know of textual catastrophes from silent emendations and from careless research that overlooks the explicitly recorded intentions of an author.4 Not only has an editor failed in scholarship if the author’s wishes are not recognized and honored, but also the rights of the author are usurped by an editor imposing his own views about what should have been written or not written rather than recording the ostensible script of the author.5 4.2 Santayana Edition: Sympathy and Editorial Scholarship The respect for authorial rights goes beyond a mere negative obligation not to interfere with them, it also carries a positive obligation for editors to do what 3 See Jerome J.  McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1983), and “The Socialization of Texts,” Documentary Editing, 12, no. 3 (1990): 56–​61. See also my “The Editor and Technology,” and “Final Intentions, Social Context, and Santayana’s Autobiography,” included in this volume. 4 Unfortunately, several of the major philosophical texts apparently suffer from this careless regard for scholarship. I am told that the editors of several of the Wittgenstein manuscripts have silently emended text based on their view of what Wittgenstein should have said rather than on what he did in fact write out. Although some do not feel this a violation of Wittgenstein’s rights, particularly since Wittgenstein legally signed over his rights to these editors, it is at least difficult to justify on the basis of public scholarship. If a colleague is going to emend a text, on any basis, I should at least be able to scrutinize the reasoning for the change rather than having to discover it by my own careful collation of the original against the edited version. 5 One may be reminded of the last works of Nietzsche that reportedly were edited by his sister, and her right-​wing political tendencies are said to have had considerable influence on her editorial skills.

184 Chapter 14 they can to assure these rights. This is true even to the point of a general recognition that most editors are, or should be, somewhat sympathetic to the author’s outlook in addition to having extensive knowledge of the author’s life and work beyond the immediate editorial task. Justifiably, authors are not pleased when someone strongly opposed to their outlook proposes to edit their works. Even if the textual editor’s scholarly credentials are unquestionably sound, authors are concerned about the many editorial judgments that must be made in the course of editing a work as well as the context in which the work would be presented (introductions, notes, etc.). These judgments, based on careful research and on the editor’s understanding of the author’s life and works, may be colored by the editor’s own views, and hence authors tend to prefer having a sympathetic person edit their works. Santayana was not an exception in this matter, and on 5 October 1936, he wrote to Benjamin P. Schwartz about a possible edition of his own letters: However, there is another question involved, which is that of the advisability of printing any letters, the need of selecting the right ones, and of editing them judiciously, I don’t mean by altering them substantially (errors or slips might well be corrected) as in leaving out indiscreet words or trivial prattle. You, as I understand, are young, you haven’t known me personally, and I will tell you quite frankly that I don’t think you are the person to assume, as yet, that sort of responsibility towards the public and towards my reputation. If it were a question of merely philosophical letters, it would be different, because you and Mr. Buchler have proved, in Obiter Scripta, that you are admirable interpreters of my work. But almost all my letters, even if touching on public or theoretical questions, have been personal, and collecting and editing them would require special tact and special knowledge of my feelings about my friends. Moreover, there is a literary executor already chosen to preside over my Nachlass, Daniel Cory; and it would naturally fall to him to collect my correspondence, as well as to edit my remaining manuscripts, if he thought it advisable. I hope, if I live long enough, to write my own life, so that a biography—​ especially as there are no events to record—​would be superfluous.6 Based on this letter, one can surmise that Santayana expects his letters to be edited, and he expects a selected edition done by an editor who can select the

6 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 1933–​1936, ed. William G.  Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2003), 387–​88.

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“right ones.” Noting that “collecting and editing them would require special tact and special knowledge of my feelings about my friends,” he endorses correcting obvious errors and slips, and he highlights the future editor’s responsibility toward the public and toward Santayana’s own reputation. These are understandable expectations, but as General Editor of the Santayana Edition, I cannot approve such willful editing of letters. Rather, we are producing as exact a text of the original letters as is feasible without simply providing facsimile copies of the originals. Hence, there is no leaving out of indiscreet words, and we are including in the edition all the letters that we have found through a twenty-​year search. Santayana’s intentions regarding a sympathetic edition are clear, and during his lifetime he made certain that his intentions were carried out. That editor, Daniel Cory, did produce two volumes of selected letters7 within the first eleven years after Santayana’s death in 1952. And it appears that Cory largely followed the guidelines Santayana suggested to Schwartz in 1936. Cory died in 1972 before he could complete the more extensive volume of letters that he had proposed in 1968. Fortunately for editorial scholarship, Cory asked William G. Holzberger to join him in this last letters project, and Holzberger continued the task after Cory’s death. He continued the task, that is, under the standards of modern textual editing, standards that do not permit willful editing of letters according to an editor’s interpretation or sympathy for the author’s reputation, but rather depend on clear evidence of what the author actually wrote or actually altered. Santayana’s fears about the reaction to his letters now appear to be dated. There is little in the letters that demean his reputation and much that will enlarge it. Approximately four hundred of his letters were selected and edited by Cory in previous volumes, and we now have close to twenty-​five hundred of them. Cory had no idea that so many letters were extant, and his editions largely were based on letters he personally collected from long-​standing friends of Santayana as well as well-​known figures in philosophy and literature. Santayana’s letters are written in that marvelous nineteenth-​century style, mingling personal remarks with substantial essays on matters of significance. To some degree, Santayana was probably correct in assuming that if the letters were published within his lifetime or shortly thereafter, they would have brought pain to some persons, perhaps even lawsuits in a few cases. But many aspects that might have offended friends and colleagues during Santayana’s lifetime no

7 The Letters of George Santayana (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955), and Santayana: The Later Years, A Portrait with Letters (New York: George Braziller, 1963).

186 Chapter 14 longer have that particular taint. Time not only changes our views of certain human actions, but it also may ease the pain of frank descriptions and admissions, e.g., sexual escapades of youth, extramarital relations of friends, negative personal characterizations of individuals who are now dead, etc. Even so, there is material that I am confident Santayana would prefer not see the public light. Certainly the letters volume will both change and enlarge the reputation of Santayana. One cannot read through them without being impressed by his ranging intellect, personal integrity, and willingness to assist others, even those who were stridently opposed to Santayana’s philosophical and political perspectives. But it is doubtful that Santayana would appreciate all the fine detail the letters provide to his life. There are characterizations of individuals that seem hard, unforgiving, and prejudicial. There are political perspectives both limited and enlarged by his isolation in Rome during World War ii, and there are youthful enthusiasms that the mature Santayana might have wished to be kept private. Perhaps one somewhat whimsical and earthly example will do. Many scholars think of Santayana as the elderly sage, living and writing in Rome and being cared for in the hospital-​clinic of the Little Company of Mary (Clinica della Piccola Compagna di Maria on Mount Caelian at 6, Via di Santo Stefano Rotondo) run by Sisters who were commonly referred to as Blue Nuns because of the color of their habit. But this image is true of Santayana only from 1941 through 1952. Santayana was born in 1863, and there is much more to his life than the philosopher living in isolation in Rome who, like the Pope, was said to “receive visitors, but never to return a visit.” The elderly sage whose respect for religion and tolerance for others is established, also had an early life filled with the expectations and excitements of youth. His relations with women caused his father concern, particularly, seemingly close relations with wealthy, married women. And there are some altogether unusual letters that can be read as the enthusiasms and irony of the graduate student. For example, while traveling he writes several very uncharacteristic letters to William Morton Fullerton, letters he refers to as “à la Rabelais.”8 Some of these letters are concerned with the sexual dilemmas of a young man, and one is concerned with Santayana’s need for a new Bible.9 8 The Letters of George Santayana, Book One, [1868]-​1909, ed. William G. Holzberger, 91. 9 Santayana writes: “Alas! my Bible, that my mother gave me with tears in her eyes, begging me never to part with it, has disappeared in the most tragic and lamentable manner. Being often in Popish and other heathen countries, I naturally carried my Bible jealously in my breeches pocket, lest the Inquisition or some tribe of cannibals should confiscate it and desecrate it, incidentally wasting and eating me as a Christian and a brother. But sad and strange experience has convinced me that the reason why in these godless countries there are no Bibles

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Whether Santayana would have asked that his letters to Fullerton not be published, or whether an editor more sensitive to Santayana’s feelings might suppress it, cannot be the question we ask as scholarly editors. As a set of documents, the standards for completeness and accuracy seem binding, and other scholars will decide the proper characterization for Santayana’s youthful enthusiasms. Even so, do we as editors not feel some qualms about publishing that which Santayana never intended for publication, in fact, publishing material that he clearly might have requested, if he were living, not be published? What right do we have as editors for removing this kind of authorial intention from the centerpiece of editorial scholarship? 5

Public Needs

5.1 Legal Rights Editors are not insensitive individuals, and they may well feel the thrust of W.H. Auden’s ditty: “Private faces in public places are wiser and nicer than public faces in private places.” This sense of the right of privacy, in part, is upheld by law as well as by our sense of morality. The law, as interpreted in the decision for J.D. Salinger in his case against Ian Hamilton and Random House, states is not because the Devil, therein supreme, prohibits them, lest men should believe and be saved. The reason why Bibles are not found is because there is an alarming scarcity of paper, none being to be found even in water closets. Now, as I am unfortunately a great frequenter of these establishments, on account of biliousness, diarrhoea, indigestion, dyspepsia, and colic; and as at the same time, mindful of my dear and sainted mother’s last wishes, I always carry my Bible in my breeches’ pocket; I have found myself in a cruel dilemma. Godliness said “Treasure thy Bible, and on no account tear out the leaves thereof.” But cleanliness answered “Did not David eat the consecrated bread when he was ahungered, and did not the Lord justify David? Tear thou then out likewise the leaves of thy Bible, and wipe thine ass therewith for thy need is as pressing as David’s, nay more.” And when I considered that since I was in England I have given up the use of drawers, and that the British and Foreign Bible Society might not be willing to send me a clean pair of trousers, even if I told them in what sacred cause I had sacrificed those I possessed—​when I considered these things I always decided in favor of cleanliness. I was careful, however—​I must say this in my own justification—​to begin by tearing out the Song of Solomon, and the passage about Lot’s daughters, and Ecclesiastes, and the pages descriptive of Sodom and Gomorrah, and such others as I thought godliness wouldn’t much care about. Still, as time went on, and my visits to water closets unprovided with paper continued, more and more of my Bible has disappeared, and now, I regret to say, only the upper half of the first page of the Gospel according to St. John remains. That is why I have to send to British and Foreign Bible Society for a new copy in which to learn how the ark was built. When it comes, I assure you your letter shall be worthily enshrined.” Ibid., 86.

188 Chapter 14 that the content of letters, that is, the writer’s language, belongs to the writer. The paper the letter is written on belongs to the recipient. Therefore, no one may quote a letter without permission of the author even if one is the recipient of the letter and in one sense owns the letter.10 Hence, when copyright privileges are still intact, an editor must gain permission from the author or from the literary executor of the author in order to publish a letter. For distant historical figures, this may not pose a problem, but for current authors it can and does.11 Although recognizing the rights of authors to the content of letters, the law still provides means for public knowledge of letters even when the author denies permission for quoting. If access is obtained through the owner of the paper, scholars can paraphrase, refer to, describe, or in other ways indicate what the content of the letter is without direct quotes. This legal compromise is disconcerting to some literary figures who vow to maintain the privacy of their correspondence to their death and to have their letters “ashed at about the time we are.”12 The central point for our purposes is that the law provides for the primary right of an author to determine who quotes his letters, but this is a conditional or prima facie right that is compromised by other legal means of referring to the content of letters. 5.2 Conditional Right of Authorship In what follows I  will propose a brief outline consideration of the manner in which the prima facie rights of authorship may be considered in editorial scholarship as well as some general conditions by which they may be overruled. 5.2.1 The gbt Approach to Textual Considerations One may maintain that the gbt approach to authorial intention only applies to the actual form and substance of the text and not to other extraneous matters such as whether the text should or should not be published. Hence, whether an author wished that certain material be published is not a significant question for the gbt approach to editing. The intention of the author in

10 11

12

Frederick Busch, “Public or Purloined? Novelists’ Letters, Biographers’ Rights,” 58. Beyond literary figures, the problem of permission to publish may be even more difficult. There are reports that significant material in the presidential papers of John F. Kennedy and of Richard Nixon are restricted from public scrutiny and from publication by editors and biographers. See Scott Jaschik, “Long a Mainstay for Studies on American Politics, Presidential Libraries Draw Praise, Complaints,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 September 1990, A-​4–​5, A8. Busch, “Public or Purloined?,” 60.

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writing particular words and punctuation is significant, regardless of whether he intended them to be published. As a result, the pragmatic thrust of the gbt approach becomes even more technical because it now limits the intentions of the author toward his text to the details of the script. Following this guideline the gbt approach is a beneficial tool in editing letters since it reinforces the editor’s charge to determine as precisely as possible the exact phrasing and parsing that the author intended in his letters. It leaves aside any further questions about the right of an author to determine whether his letters or other works are published or not. Value questions concerning the primacy of authorship are omitted from the question of the authorial intention concerning the exact form of words and punctuation. Will this positivistic-​like limitation do? It certainly seems so in particular cases. After all, the decision to publish or not is quite different from the decision to write a letter to a friend or to compose a draft. Hence, gbt can legitimately limit the right of authorial intention to the form and substance of the text alone without worrying about extraneous concerns. This leaves individual editors with the moral decision of publishing material never intended for publication or perhaps even prohibited from publication by the author. It properly, in my way of thinking, limits a pragmatic approach to editing to its real task. Is this limitation sufficient, however, to place authorial intention always as the primary focus for determining the text of letters? In the vast majority of cases, authorial intention will be the principal criterion for determining the text of letters. In instances where the copy-​text for the letter is the original, then the authorial intentions are usually demonstrably clear—​barring those exasperating difficulties associated with deciphering handwriting, cancellations, insertions, etc. In cases where letters have been previously published, it is still the case that the original holograph or the version chronologically closest to it will likely be the best source for authorial intention. But will this always be the case? I think there are at least a few possible cases in which the editor may choose not to publish letters based solely on authorial intention as described above, but, admittedly these cases are probably few in number. 5.2.1.1 Context and Significance vs. Authorial Intention Perhaps the original author of a letter rallying individuals to political revolution is no longer known. The letter appeared in hundreds of publications within a period of one month. Some publications were merely street leaflets, other newspapers, and finally the letter has been codified in several textbooks about the revolution. However, even though the letter is a simple three-​paragraph text, there are significant variants in all the forms of the letters, the original

190 Chapter 14 letter being considerably simpler in form and structure, and the more codified form becoming more elegant and precise in content. One might well argue that the earliest form should be the basis for the text that is published. The actual text of the now unknown author is more likely to correspond to that of the first publication than the last. Knowing something about the use of propaganda in such circumstances, one can well assume that editors took liberty with the text, revised it according to their own interests, and refined it for persuasive value. Following the gbt approach, the letter to be published would most likely resemble that of the unknown author, and one may surmise that it is somewhat of a less forceful letter than in its final form. If one were publishing letters of the unknown author, it may seem to make sense to follow this strategy, but if one is publishing a book of revolutionary letters, that is, the context is not the letters of an individual, but the letters of the revolution, then the final form of the letter with proper notes concerning its historical stemma would appear to be more appropriate. Hence the prima facie right of the original author of the letter to determine the exact nature of his own writing may in fact be overridden by the more pressing obligation to publish the letter in the form that had the greatest impact on the revolution. The context of the publication and of the use of the letter may well determine whether it is best to give full honor to the prima facie rights of the author. 5.2.1.2 Authorial Eccentricities In addition to contextual considerations, authorial eccentricities may play a role in overriding the prima facie right of authorial intention even in the publication of letters. For example, suppose an American author was intent on making certain the readership of his letters was quite small and limited any publication of letters to translations in a relatively little-​known Chinese dialect. He or she enforced this restriction when alive and asked that it be maintained after the author’s death. In the meantime, the importance of the author’s other literary works escalated, and there is an apparent need to know more about the writer: habits, influences, friendships, writing patterns, etc. Insatiable biographers are waiting in the wings. You have received all the requisite permissions to edit and publish the letters, and the present literary executor indicates there is no need to publish the material in the Chinese dialect. Would you still wish to follow the final authorial intentions? Would you not publish the letters in a form readily accessible to the readership while noting the authorial wishes? One can imagine, I  hope with some delight, other possible authorial eccentricities:  wishing every third word to be published, wanting the material published right to left or bottom to top. Reportedly, one Harvard logician provided the Harvard Archives with his unpublished material. The material came

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in boxes of thin strips of rolled paper. The logician had cut standard size paper into long strips running from top to bottom, rolled each strip, and then mixed them in each box. This was an effort to make certain anyone who could decipher his unpublished material would have to understand it. I am not certain how one would begin to publish such a record. 5.2.1.3 Copy-​Text Theory vs. Readability There are some peculiar circumstances in which the copy-​text theory may provide the basis for a text but not the basis for the actual or literal substantives or accidentals. Recently, Ilse Fasol faced such a problem in editing the notebooks of her grandfather, Ludwig Boltzmann, the famous physicist and naturalistic philosopher. Boltzmann wrote his notebooks in a nineteenth-​century shorthand, then she had to determine carefully the precise meaning of Boltzmann’s idiosyncratic notation that evolved over a period of years. If the notebooks had been published in their original form, with the substantives and accidentals based solely on the copy-​text forms, then they would have been unreadable to anyone. However, the first publication is perhaps more of a translation of the notebooks, and one may easily, it seems to me, justify this translation because the social conventions of readability make it a requirement not to use the copy-​text as the literal model for the published substantives and accidentals. 5.2.1.4 Clear Authorial Intention and Uncertainty of Application There are times when an author may clearly state his preference for substantives or accidentals, but the application of that intention may be uncertain because of ambiguous social conventions. For instance, beginning around 1894 Santayana adopted British spelling and repeatedly asked that his preference be honored in his publications. His letters, notebooks, and marginalia exhibit the British pattern from that point on, although there are clearly some few reversions back to American forms. What could cause any uncertainty? Rather simply the question of which words end in an “ise” form as opposed to an “ize” form. The complication involves: 1. Santayana’s handwritten medial “s” and “z” are indistinguishable in almost all instances. 2. Scribner’s did not accede to Santayana’s wishes until the mid-​1930s after Santayana was a well-​established world figure—​he appeared on the front of Time (3 February 1936), his novel (1936), and autobiography (1944) became best-​selling Book-​of-​the-​Month Club selections, and Scribner’s published a collector’s edition of Santayana’s works (the Triton Edition). In finally acceding to his wishes, Scribner’s decided on the simplest course of action: convert all “ize” forms to “ise” and eliminate any occurrence of

192 Chapter 14 “ize.” Hence, in the Triton Edition of Santayana’s works one finds not only “honour,” but also “recognize,” “mesmerise,” and “Americanise,” etc. 3. Santayana’s English publisher, Constable, was not entirely consistent in its publications of Santayana’s works. Initially Constable published from Scribner’s sheets, then adopted a pattern of “ise” forms that had many variations. 4. Many academic presses followed Hart’s Rules adopted for Oxford University Press. The rules for “ise” forms are determined by the derivation of the word. French derivations have the “ise” form, but Greek derivations do not. All converted names are to use the “ize” form, e.g., “mesmerize” and “Americanize.” Santayana’s knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, German, Spanish, and English might incline one to believe he would be sensitive to the origin of words. 5. The only recorded instances of Santayana’s intentions are his repeated letters asking for British forms and a few instances where he has corrected proofs or personal copies of books, but for the most part there is little tangible evidence of the specific forms of “ise” and “ize” that he prefers. Although we know that Santayana preferred British spelling (and perhaps punctuation), which forms are we to follow regarding “ise” and “ize” spellings? 5.2.1.5 Modest Proposal The preceding examples serve as reminders that there are many factors that determine the actual textual form. A central consideration in most instances, particularly for letters, will be authorial intention as documented in the copy-​ text. However, this central consideration is recognition of a prima facie right that acknowledges the primacy of the writer in textual matters, but it is a conditional right that may be overridden depending on specific circumstances. But what of the more overall question: to publish or not to publish? If an author has expressly forbidden certain material to be published, should an editor override that authorial request? 5.2.2 Moral Question: To Publish or Not to Publish? 5.2.2.1 Quotidian Example Scholarly editors regularly publish material not intended for publication. We do this when we record alterations, changes made when the author strikes material she or he does not want published. Our justification is to provide a historical record of the text, to treat the document as an object of scholarship rather than follow the clear intent of the author not to have published, and presumably not to have recorded, these forms. In these instances, the entire field of textual scholarship is one that overrules authorial intention on a day-​by-​day

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basis. As a part of our quotidian life we override the demonstrative intention of the author and publish material she or he has stricken from the record. In brief, our rationale is simply that the obligations of editorial scholarship call for this information; without it our knowledge of major figures, of major historical events, would be considerably less than it is. 5.2.2.2 The Moral Question Frederick Busch insists that “the disposition of the letters of writers, mute and inglorious or otherwise, is a matter of ethical as well as literary concern.” The concern is a right to privacy as opposed to “a burst of self-​serving talk about scholarship and public service, insisted on the reader’s alleged need (some call it a right) to know.”13 This is not an unimportant issue, and it will not be possible to treat it well in the remainder of this paper. Above all, we cannot be content with only the veil of scholarly and public rights covering our violations of individual rights to privacy. My modest proposal is that (1) authors and editors are justified in believing we are doing something wrong by prying into private lives and writings, (2) that our justification is based on prima facie rights of the author—​the right to privacy in particular, and (3) that there are justifications for overriding prima facie rights although it may not always be clear when we have such justification. 5.2.2.2.1

Justification for Historical Figures

5.2.2.2.2

Justification for Contemporary Figures

The most obvious justification for overriding the rights of an author is that the circumstances that would have caused us to honor the original right to privacy have now changed. With historical figures this is often the case. The author is dead, perhaps long dead; the individuals and institutions that might have been harmed by disclosures in the letters are also dead, and their descendants are more curious about the record than worried about it. Hence, the consequences of overriding the authorial right to privacy in letters may be overridden by simply noting that the consequences of doing so are far better than not doing so, i.e., the consequences for historical, literary, and philosophical understanding outweigh the mild, if any, negative consequences of acting in accordance with the author’s prima facie right to privacy. The justification for overriding the prima facie rights of contemporary authors is more difficult. Which of us would like to have all our unpublished 13 Ibid., 58.

194 Chapter 14 material opened for public scrutiny during our lifetimes, including personal letters written out of the circumstance of particular occasions and particular relationships? The possibilities of harm and misunderstanding resulting from such public disclosure is perhaps high, and no doubt, higher for some than for others. At the same time, it is clear that on occasions of considerable consequence, there is general agreement that the authorial right to privacy should be overridden. If some of Hitler’s correspondence and notes had been publicized by his contemporaries, then the German people and the rest of the world might not have suffered as they did. If some of Richard Nixon’s contemporaries had published some of his personal correspondence and internal communiqués, the presidency of the United States might not have suffered such degradation. If some of John F. Kennedy’s personal correspondence had been public, perhaps his presidency would not have had such an uplifting sense for the American public. These examples are all from political figures whose lives and habits have great impact on others. Such impact is rare for contemporary literary or philosophical figures, although perhaps there are exceptions. At any rate, it seems that we have a very high moral obligation to honor the conditional rights of scholars to their privacy. We may decide to override that right, but when we do, we should have good reasons, reasons other than curiosity.

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A Book Review of Henry Samuel Levinson’s Santayana: Pragmatism and the Spiritual Life Henry Levinson’s Santayana: Pragmatism and the Spiritual Life is one of the most significant works that has been published on Santayana’s thought as well as on pragmatism. It will cause many to reconsider the traditional rendering of Santayana and of the pragmatic movement, and I recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in understanding the development of American philosophy. This book is the first intellectual biography of Santayana’s thought that captures the common thread of his earlier and later works, focuses on Santayana’s philosophical relationships with his contemporary American philosophers and with current American thought, and details the roots and development of Santayana’s concept of the spiritual life articulated in his pragmatic naturalism. Recalling the 1963 invitation of Arthur Danto to revive the study of Santayana, Levinson agrees with Danto that many philosophers are recapitulating “the intellectual crisis which Santayana helped overcome,” breaking through “to a view of things not dissimilar to the one he [Santayana] achieved.”1 In contrast to the barrenness of contemporary philosophy and to some efforts to revive pragmatic naturalism in a chameleon-​like form, Santayana’s philosophy focuses on the capaciousness of social and cultural practices articulated institutionally, on the unconscious physical complexity of individual suffering, joy, and responsibility. His is a celebrational philosophy, a festive criticism comparable to a work of art, that Levinson carefully describes through its developmental stages. In highlighting the distinctive contributions of Santayana to American pragmatism, Levinson’s account is a singular benefit to scholarship. Through a careful analysis of The Life of Reason, he places Santayana at the forefront of pragmatism as well as a precursor of Wittgenstein’s insights into the social structures that shape human life and expression. Santayana’s central contribution is to view reason as the harmonizing of diverse interests through institutions of social practice. There is no better description of the significant philosophical developments of Santayana’s thought prior to his leaving Harvard 1 Arthur Danto, “Santayana and the Task Ahead,” The Nation, (221 December 1963): 437–​40.

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196 Chapter 15 nor of his festive criticism following his retirement (at the age of forty-​eight). Too long, rumors and myths have characterized Santayana’s Harvard career; Levinson gives the first clear explanation of why Santayana found an academic career unfulfilling, even while having considerable success in it, and the first full explication of the relationship between Santayana’s early works (including his poetry and cultural criticism) and his later philosophical development. Levinson’s account of Santayana’s intellectual development at Harvard is the best I have read, and his explanation of Santayana’s leaving Harvard is the most cogent account available—​far superior to the narrow perspectives found in many histories of American philosophy. It is worth noting that given the present critical examination of American universities, Santayana’s turn-​of-​the-​ century concerns seem remarkably apt, e.g., his fear that academic professionalism will eventually smother the scholar with business-​like governance and committees, and his view that higher education is overgrown with “thistles of trivial and narrow scholarship.”2 Levinson’s ability to capture succinctly the central points of Santayana’s philosophical development after Harvard is splendid: …as he lives in Oxford during his fifties, a privileged and middle-​aged bystander to combat, he finds himself clearing his philosophical voice in a new way, one that highlights soliloquy more than statesmanship, festivity or celebration more than representation, playfulness more than utility, understanding more than judgment, comic relief more than tragic resignation or sublime exultation, religious discipline more than profession of claims intended to carry authority for everybody. These are the characteristics that lead Santayana eventually to call his philosophy “a discipline of the mind and heart, a lay religion.”3 But if the book were filled only with general summary statements, it could be dismissed. It cannot be. Levinson’s careful and detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between Santayana and his contemporaries (Royce, James, Russell, and Dewey, to mention only four) is well argued and documented. Beginning with six differences between the pragmatists and Santayana, Levinson describes Santayana’s central place in pragmatism as well as his enriching liberation from pragmatism’s unnecessary narrowness. A quick summary of the differences is as follows: (1) pragmatism’s focus on social life vs. 2 George Santayana, “Philosophy in the Bleachers,” The Harvard Monthly, no. 5 (July 1894): 189. 3 Henry Samuel Levinson, Santayana:  Pragmatism and the Spiritual Life (Chapel Hill:  The North Carolina University Press, 1992), 193.

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Santayana’s emphasis on solitude; (2)  human tragedy vs. human comedy; (3)  self-​assertion vs. consciousness of impotence; (4)  political engagement vs. intellectual festivity; (5) humanistic religion vs. natural religion; and (6) a commitment to an American-​style democracy vs. less democratically oriented forms of government such as a timocracy. For Santayana, his particular polar emphases in these six differences are not considered as substitutes for the other poles but as enrichments and correctives. For example, social life that does not enrich individual life (solitude) has substituted means for ends and, having lost sight of its aim, becomes empty and worthless. Only with the last difference, democracy vs. timocracy, is there something like a polar choice. Santayana was unwilling to give any particular form of government an absolute status, and he recounted the many ways in which democracies, both socialistic and capitalistic, substituted homogeneity and mass life for excellence in individual life.  His tendency to favor timocracy was support for a government, as he saw it, “demanding equal opportunity but permitting unequal achievement along with government by people who merited their assigned offices by the breadth and depth of their accomplishments in economic and political arts.”4 In chapters with titles such as “Grace and Law,” “Wistful Materialism,” and “Poetic Religion,” Levinson traces the roots and edges of Santayana’s early thought that led to his central pragmatic role with the publication of The Life of Reason. Levinson’s account of Santayana’s Emersonian roots deserves close reading. He pauses, as if in an interlude, to describe Santayana’s developing epistemology in a brief section on “Knowledge is Nonfoundational,” noting Santayana’s attempt to naturalize epistemology in a project similar to Quine’s The Roots of Reference but without much success. Levinson’s account of Santayana’s gradual but distinctive move from the Harvard philosophical mentality, particularly his move away from being a philosophical statesman and from the view of language as representative, not only seems accurate but places Santayana as a forerunner of much that presently is being discussed. Removing himself, literally and philosophically, from the American scene, Santayana increasingly came to believe that the “brimstone” sensibility of pragmatism was wrong-​headed.5 This sensibility was that of the philosophical statesman, the view that philosophers are engaged fundamentally in social and cultural policy formulation, and, if they are not, then they are not pulling their civic weight. In this fashion, Santayana believes the 4 Henry Samuel Levinson, Santayana, 8. 5 See George Santayana, Character & Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 53.

198 Chapter 15 pragmatists came to belie “the genuinely expressive, poetic, meditative, and festive character of their vocation.”6 This is a condition that James took seriously in his “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,” suggesting that the world of practical responsibility fosters a blindness to multi-​plural ways of living that can only be escaped by catching sight of “the world of impersonal worths as such” and “only your mystic, your dreamer, or your insolent loafer or tramp can afford so sympathetic an occupation…”7 Interestingly, America’s imperialistic actions toward the Philippines during the Spanish-​American War sparked James’ remarks; this was a war that had a much deeper ancestral and historical aspect for Santayana and led to his “Young Sammy’s First Wild Oats.” Whether connected or not, Santayana later came to identify himself as an intellectual vagabond or tramp, not isolated in the specific perspectives of an ideology, hosted by the world, and devoted to spiritual disciplines that “appear irresponsible to philosophers hoping to command representative or some otherwise privileged authority at the center of society.”8 Building on his naturalism, institutional pragmatism, social realism, and poetic religion, Santayana on leaving Harvard moves even farther from the role of philosophical statesman by removing the representative authority of language from the quest for a comprehensive synthesis, by narrowing the line between literature and philosophy (as he had earlier done between religion and poetry), and by wrestling more with the influence of James than of Emerson. Santayana’s stay in Oxford during the Great War led to his famous encounter to Wilson’s war to end all wars: “Only the dead have seen the end of all war.”9 Again Levinson carefully details the steps of Santayana’s intellectual growth during these years: Santayana’s message is clear: The epistemological project that Russell’s Problems epitomizes is diseased. The renewed quest to establish unmediated Knowledge of Reality simply leads to “intellectual cramp” (Soliloquies, 216). Philosophy has become spiritually disordered by blinding its practitioners from their traditional and proper task, which is to celebrate the good life. If the spiritual disciplines of philosophy are to thrive, philosophers have to take off the bandages of epistemology and metaphysics 6 Henry Samuel Levinson, Santayana,165. 7 William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1929), 247. 8 Henry Samuel Levinson, Santayana, 167. 9 George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 102.

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altogether, accept the finite and fallible status of their knowledge claims, and get on with confessing their belief in the things that make life worth living. That, I now hope to show, is what Santayana’s Scepticism and Animal Faith tried to accomplish, paving the way for the characterizations of spiritual life he wrought, diversely, in such works as Realms of Being, Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and The Idea of Christ in the Gospels.10 Levinson’s analysis of Santayana’s later works focuses on the development of the spiritual life through his more technical works such as Realms of Being as well as his more playful volumes such as Dialogues in Limbo and his novel, The Last Puritan. Few scholars have paid much attention to the later works of Santayana; this is ironic since much of what is occurring presently in American philosophy wrestles with problems similar to those Santayana encountered and, ironically, comes very close to the same conclusions. In his “Epilogue” Levinson notes the surprising lack of reference to Santayana in Rorty, pointing out that Rorty’s list of Santayana’s virtues misses “their practical moral and spiritual links,”11 and he goes on to note that Santayana’s natural comedy at its best is tailor-​made “to block arrogance, foster a just estimate of pluriform humanity, demand self-​criticism, and make room for joy and responsibility.”12 The consistent misunderstanding between Santayana and Dewey is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of Santayana’s leaving America in 1912 (he never returned to the U.S., although he was offered several distinguished chairs at Harvard and other American and English universities). His absence made it unlikely that two individuals of different temperaments could communicate easily over long distances. Levinson’s comments on Santayana and Dewey throughout the book are very helpful and should be of considerable interest to Dewey scholars. In the penultimate chapter, “Strong Liberal Democracy,” Levinson wrestles with his own leanings toward being a Deweyan democrat and with Santayana’s criticism of Dewey’s philosophical philosophy. The Santayanan tension between statesmanship and poetic spirituality provides the basis for a careful consideration of what is necessary in a liberal democracy. The twin fears of private anarchy and public uniformity are the grounds for Santayana’s criticism of democracy, but his account of social justice clearly appears lacking to Levinson. Santayana’s inattentiveness to social inequality is perhaps understandable in the context of his naturalism where the final cause is the “authority of 10 Henry Samuel Levinson, Santayana, 204. 11 Ibid., 298. 12 Ibid., 299.

200 Chapter 15 things.” His basic contention that suffering is the worst feature of human life, not social inequality, causes him to focus more on the natural dilemmas of the individual rather on social action. Coupling this contention with the view that all institutions, including governments, are inextricably rooted in their culture and background perhaps makes it understandable that he would not readily see how particular views of social inequality can be transferred readily from one culture to another. In addition, Santayana’s European, and particularly Spanish, background clearly influenced his attitudes toward social action. His repeated “Latin” perspective caused him to look with considerable suspicion toward forcing Anglo-​Saxon outlooks on other cultures. Yet, in individual matters he was remarkably forthcoming, as when he provided financial support to numerous friends, often of quite different philosophical, literary, and political persuasions than his own. He, for example, provided Bertrand Russell (a person whose philosophical and political views hardly paralleled those of Santayana) significant funds on a yearly basis during a period when Russell was in difficult circumstances and unable to find a teaching post in England or the U.S. There is no doubt, as Levinson readily points out, that many relevant questions concerning social inequality go unanswered in Santayana’s Dominations and Powers. Levinson closes the chapter by trying to bring Santayana’s focus on spirituality within the fold of liberal democracy: But as citizens in a strong liberal democracy we may lean our public interest in mutualism, or private social interest in moral bonding, and our solitary interest in spirituality against each other supportively. As I see it, if and when we will do so, we are maintaining a culture that lets the least among us, not only do well, but be well. The “authority of things” holds the ultimate hand in this inevitable tragicomic card game. In the end, we are only able to hope that the cards things now conceal are flush enough.13 Throughout the book, Levinson presents an extensive survey of writers, philosophical and literary (e.g., Eliot, Stevens, Kundera, Cervantes, Dante), that significantly contribute to the life and thought of George Santayana. Perhaps nowhere is there as carefully drawn a comparison of Santayana to his contemporaries in American pragmatism (James, Dewey, Hook, etc.), and, in addition, Santayana’s classical roots as well as his association with present philosophical 13 Ibid., 284.

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issues (Strawson, Goodman, Putnam, Quine, and Rorty, for example) are carefully explicated. All in all, the richness of philosophical, literary, and historical consideration makes this a challenging and informative book. Levinson’s Santayana: Pragmatism and the Spiritual Life is published in the context of a growing resurgence of interest in Santayana scholarship. Over 200 articles and twenty-​nine books have appeared in the last two decades, and, as with Dewey and James scholarship, the critical edition of The Works of George Santayana appears to help reignite interests. Three volumes of the edition have been published by mit Press: Persons and Places (1986), The Sense of Beauty (1988), Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1989). The Last Puritan, Santayana’s best-​selling novel is the fourth volume of the edition and is scheduled for a spring 1993 publication. And within two more years the four-​book volume of Letters will be published, making available for the first time nearly 2500 letters of Santayana. In addition, the first international conference on Santayana was held in Ávila, Spain (Santayana’s boyhood home) in May 1992. Six recent books, in particular, indicate the breadth of interest in Santayana without diminishing the importance of Levinson’s volume. Until John McCormick’s George Santayana: A Biography (Knopf, 1987), the only biography of Santayana was Howgate’s George Santayana (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1938), published fourteen years prior to Santayana’s death in 1952. Previously, Timothy Sprigge’s Santayana: An Examination of His Philosophy (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974) was published providing the first detailed account of Santayana’s philosophical development and thought, and John Lachs’s George Santayana (Twayne, 1988) is principally an introduction to the thought of Santayana. In 1991, Critical Essays on George Santayana (G.K. Hall & Co.), edited by Kenneth M. Price and Robert C. Leitz, iii, was published in the series “Critical Essays on American Literature.” During the spring of 1992, two additional books were published:  David Dawidoff’s The Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage (The Univ. of North Carolina Press) and David Carter’s George Santayana (Chelsea House Publishers). In contrast to McCormick’s biography, Levinson focuses principally on Santayana’s religious naturalism and its relationship to pragmatism. Indeed, the central importance of religious thought for Santayana and for pragmatism is not the primary focus of the books mentioned above. Sprigge’s work is an explication of the philosophical positions and arguments in Santayana’s philosophy; Lachs’s book is an introduction, an excellent one, to the thought of Santayana; and McCormick’s biography is a more traditional biography, detailing the life and thought of Santayana. Price and Leitz have pulled together critical essays focusing primarily on Santayana’s contribution to American literature and cultural criticism. Dawidoff’s volume is a reexamination of Santayana

202 Chapter 15 from the perspective of homosexual literature, and Carter’s work is an introduction to Santayana in the Chelsea House “Hispanics of Achievement” series for young people. Therefore, Levinson’s work fills a much-​needed vacancy not only in Santayana scholarship, in which there are many vacancies, but also in the history of pragmatism where there has been surprisingly little interest in the spiritual life that so influenced its development. The renewed interest in Santayana is perhaps understandable given our fin de siècle mood. Even his most often-​quoted epigram calls attention to the need for understanding our history: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”14 Reexamination of one’s heritage and of one’s prospects for the future is a traditional marking of significant cultural turning points, and one small reason for hope in our future is that more scholars are turning to an examination of Santayana’s thought. His clear sense of being European provides a unique appraisal of American character and thought, one that now we are forced to face with the growth and development of a united Europe. His concern that American youthfulness and energy is not wise enough to carry future generations forward in to the complexity of relationships with other cultures is a concern that is now inescapable. His Hispanic heritage coupled with his feeling of being an outsider in America embody much of the apprehension and concern that are unavoidable as we begin to find our milieu becoming factionalized and fragmented. And his sense of the complexity and joy of life is clearly a feature that we can learn from as we move forward into the next millennium. It seems that Arthur Danto’s call to revive Santayana studies is being heeded, although belatedly. If so, philosophy and individual scholars clearly will be the better for it. 14

George Santayana, The Life of Reason: Introduction and Common Sense (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 284.

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An Interview with Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. 1 Introduction I suspect everyone believes his or her favorite philosopher is either (a) insufficiently well-​known; often misinterpreted; or (b) both, and I am no exception. Therefore, when Dr. Herman Saatkamp came to come speak here at siuc, I jumped at the chance to increase the awareness of George Santayana among Kinesis’ readership. Dr. Saatkamp is possibly the greatest living authority on Santayana, probably one of the top five, and certainly one of the top ten. He was the principal organizer of the First International Conference on George Santayana, held in Ávila, Spain, in 1992. I was fortunate enough to attend. ​R ichard Detar, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

kinesis: How about if we begin with the questions of Santayana’s alleged fascism? saatkamp: Santayana is politically and personally conservative, but it is a real mistake to think of him as a fascist. A number of people have thought of Santayana as sympathetic to fascism, primarily due to his living in Rome during wwii. But, actually, he tried to get out of Rome to neutral territory. When he arrived by train at the Swiss border, he didn’t have the proper papers (his was a complicated story: A Spanish citizen, living in Rome, with most of his financial ties in the U.S. and England). He returned to Rome, and being nearly eighty years old, took up residence in a hospital-​clinic run by Catholic nuns, where he lived until his death in 1952. Ezra Pound, who was a fascist, tried desperately to get Santayana to endorse Fascism, and he used quotes from Santayana in his radio broadcast in wwii from Rome. Santayana refers to Ezra Pound as crazy, and he asked the nuns at the hospital-​clinic to help him avoid seeing Pound. Santayana’s own view of politics is quite different from the fascism of wwii. Interestingly, Santayana, the Harvard Professor, is more identified with the socialists. And his students with socialist interests (Walter Lippmann and others) would meet in Santayana’s apartment. There is a letter in the siu’s collection to Sidney Hook (15 April 1933). This is a time when Sidney Hook is a socialist endorsing Marxism (quite different

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204 Chapter 16 from his later views), and Santayana has just read Hook’s book on Marx (Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx, 1933). Hook discusses the labor theory of value in Marxism, which Santayana has always found very difficult, seeing it as a form of moralism or partisan sentiment. Santayana says that Hook has resolved the problem of value by putting it in a different terminology (its purpose is to “preach an ideal.”) He writes: “And that—​though morally and politically it is far from my own feeling—​reconciles me to Marx theoretically: which is very satisfactory, because I otherwise entirely agree with him in his historical materialism—​and also with his low opinion of capitalism.” In the same letter, Santayana notes that capitalism is a technical device accompanying industrialism that he sees as the “radical evil” because “it forces millions of men to labour hopelessly in order to supply themselves—​or the capitalists among them—​ with a lot of rubbish.”1 In the second part of the letter he says to Hook, “You Deweyfy Marx a good deal. Wouldn’t it be better to Marxify Dewey?” He goes on to talk about how important it is to look for material conditions and to emphasize that physical causes are the determinants of what happens in the world. Santayana’s difficulty with fascism is that it’s ideological and totalitarian, and goes against the natural structures of human organizations. So there’s a very strong criticism of fascism. And in fact, in one of his books, which is not one of his best philosophical books, Egotism in German Philosophy (1915), there is an effort to describe the narrow political perspectives in this egoistic framework. The book was reprinted during wwii. kinesis: I do have a feeling that there was a certain cultural sense in which he was deeply conservative. saatkamp: The conservatism is largely based again on his materialism. He doesn’t believe that nature fosters frequent, radical change—​sometimes radical changes occur in nature, but not frequently. If one hopes to change social order and structure, you do it through the ingrained and embodied structures that have existed over time. Religion is a good example. Santayana grew up in Catholic Spain. He never was, as he put it, “taken in” by the mythology of religion, but he came to appropriate the role religion plays in society and to appreciate the better side of it—​that is, the encouragement for care and concern in relationships, for stability in social organization and purpose, the celebration of living, etc. He said that if religion were taken literally, however, it turned into fanaticism and 1 This letter can read in its entirety in The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 1933–​1936, ed. William G. Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2003), 21–​22.

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dogmatism, and that it turned, in the worst way, against human ends. Known for his epigrams, Santayana defines fanaticism as “redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.” His basic conservatism rests in what he sees as the ongoing structures of nature. He does have very strong criticism of nineteenth-​century century and twentieth-​century liberalism, which he characterizes as believing that one can alter the structure of a society through words or through moral preachings. He had very little hope for any type of humanistic religion developing (contra Dewey). Religion develops as an institution embodied in basic societal needs. You cannot institute a religious practice by simply calling for it in moral preachings. On a personal basis, he had a tremendous sense of order in his life particularly in his mature years. The widely held view of his personal conservatism stems in part from many of his best-​known writings coming when he was an older man. He retired from Harvard when he was forty-​eight, and spent the next forty years of his life in Europe, and actually the last twenty years of his life publishing an immense amount of material. And by that time his life was one of specific patterns: he wrote in the mornings, walked in the afternoons, received guests in the late afternoons, and returned to his rooms in the early evenings and completed his day of writing before ten o’clock. The night porter at one of his residences is reported to have said that he never met or saw Santayana. By the late 1920s he was a celebrated international figure sought out by many persons. But he kept a kind of orderliness in his life of habits, and he felt that was very important also in social structure. kinesis: Actually, though, if he did believe in a kind of gradual change based on existing institution, and sort of based on practical experience, it sounds as though that’s not terribly far from Dewey. I have always rather suspected that they may have been closer than either of them wanted to think. saatkamp: Yes, it’s not very far from Dewey at all. Through the principle difference is that he didn’t think that Dewey went far enough. That is, Dewey wasn’t naturalist enough, he wasn’t materialist enough, he wasn’t a Marxist enough to bring about social changes in a coherent and embodied way. Dewey, from Santayana’s perspective, put too much focus on experience and human experience. Santayana believed that the world consisted of natural forces beyond experience, and that it was wisdom to come into line with those forces, adjust to them, and become a festive part of the world. As opposed to the Deweyan sense that humans have a particular role in controlling and directing and managing the world—​Santayana’s view is quite different.

206 Chapter 16 kinesis: He would probably have had less faith in education, for instance, as a force to remake the world. saatkamp:  That depends on the kind of education. That is, if the education was only of social reform, suggesting that human beings were somehow unique in the universe, or had a special value, or were somehow different or transcendent from the natural structure of the world, then he would have very little hope in that. But he would have a lot of hope in an education that places human beings as one type of animal in a natural structure—​an education that leads to what Santayana calls “self-​knowledge” of one’s natural make-​up, genetic background, social institutions, and the natural world. Such hope carries with it the notion that genuine knowledge leads to integrity, and integrity is action consistent with one’s own nature and natural world around you. That leads, then, to a qualitative life in which one can experience beauty and one can experience what Santayana calls a “dramatic” existence in an uncaring, undramatic world. kinesis: It may not be the best way to approach it, but it strikes me that we’ve mentioned, at least briefly, his relation to various “isms”: Catholicism, conservatism, fascism, liberalism; What about materialism? He called himself a materialist, but in a different way from the way many people would think. What would you say would be the main difference there? saatkamp: I don’t know if the term is so different from Santayana, although there are many people who characterized Santayana’s materialism as very different. At one point, Santayana says that he’s a materialist and apparently the only one living. The basic idea is that he’s a non-​reductive materialist, that is, he believes there are certain realities—​the realities of human consciousness, aesthetic experiences—​that are real but are not reducible to material structures. At the same time, if you want to explain these qualities of life, the only explanation is a physical, causal one. He has a difficult time finding the words to describe these non-​reductive features, a difficulty shared by Peter F. Strawson and others who maintain a non-​reductive materialism. It is interesting that Santayana’s materialism of 1923 parallels Strawson’s naturalism of 1983. For both, a great difficulty is characterizing mental events. Since mental events are conscious experiences, aesthetic elements, can they be identical to some sort of chemical-​electrical component? Santayana thought not, and he used a number of different terms to describe them, including referring to mental events as supervenient—​a term that he used in the 1890s to describe the sense of beauty. Only in the last twenty years has the supervenient theory come forward for major consideration. He also used more

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classical philosophical terms to characterize the objects of thought (of consciousness) and essence was the one he settled on. He thought its heritage gave it more importance than the terms being used in modern philosophy (sense data, for example). By essence he simply means the object of any moments of consciousness, a universal. But he also says that essence is the one term he most regretted using because it caused the greatest misunderstanding. When he talks about universals (blue, green, any concept in language that we use), he is not talking about any particular object nor creating a realm in which those objects exist. For Santayana, there is only one world; the physical world. This material world has many elements and many aspects, and it generates conscious experiences, emotions, qualitative features not reducible to material elements. kinesis: What we experience, then are essences? saatkamp: Well, essences are what we are conscious of if you narrow consciousness down to moments of awareness (a narrowing that made a lot of sense when he first began writing about essences in the second decade of the twentieth century). In contrast, what we physically experience, Santayana says, is the material world. And all experiences are generated by interaction between physical objects and a person, another physical object. But this interaction generates an awareness which is not found in physical objects, and that awareness, if you pare it down to a moment of consciousness, focuses only on a ‘that’ or a ‘there,’ using Russell’s terms, which are essences. The term essence was used by Russell, Moore, and Carnap, at the turn of the century. There was a view that from momentary human experiences you could build up the entire world of human beliefs and knowledge. Russell said he wasn’t going to lay out such a view but that he thought it was possible, given the use of mathematics and essences. Carnap tried to do this in 1928 in one of his first major works, and found that it was not possible to do. You could not build up the external world from momentary experiential instances. Santayana, five years earlier, published Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923) showing exactly the same thing. In fact, he uses a reductio ad absurdum type of structure. If you focus only on that which is given in a moment of awareness, you end up in a solipsism of the present moment, which leads no place because it leaves you with nothing to believe in, only a ‘that’ or a ‘there’ at most. Then Santayana turns to maintain that beliefs are based simply on animal bias or animal impulse, what he calls “animal faith.” Five years later Carnap, also under the influence of Russell, puts out a more rigorous, logical account using a reductio ad absurdum argument and ends in the same place. But he does not turn to animal bias. Santayana’s the one who moves to the natural, pragmatic thrust of action and belief.

208 Chapter 16 kinesis: It sounds as though the main reason we don’t think of him as an analytic philosopher is a matter of style. I think that at some point didn’t Russell say that Santayana may have been more convincing if he had mastered symbolic logic? saatkamp: Santayana said he wished he had mastered logic so that his own work might be taken more seriously. But Santayana’s philosophy does not focus on the analysis of language. He sees language as a part of a social structure, a by-​product of physical forces and a physical environment, giving no privileged position to the meaning of particular terms. If you want to know what is meant by being a citizen, you don’t go to the dictionary or do conceptual analysis to privilege any one definition. Rather, you find what the activity of being a citizen is in a physical world, in a particular social setting and physical environment. It may be different for different individuals, different environments, and different structures. He was clearly a relativist. So Santayana’s account of the role of a philosopher is not to focus on the analysis of language, since language has no privileged position; indeed it is derivative of other material factors. From Santayana’s initial perspective all that you could learn from the analysis of language were basically tautological structures. But if you want to know what language is about, then you try to discover what he calls habits, very much in the tradition of Aristotle, that are embodied in activities within social structures such as governmental and educational structures. So, although he doesn’t discount the analysis of language, altogether, it didn’t seem to be in the forefront of what a philosopher should do. He does have several articles that fit very nicely in the analytic tradition. He has a rather nice essay on the meaning of the words “is.” In The Realm of Truth there is a chapter on ethical truth that gives a careful, non-​cognitivist account of ethical statements. In a way similar to A.J. Ayer and other non-​cognitivists, he maintains that ethical statements are simply expressions and preferences. But for Santayana, although he could use this methodology, he doesn’t see it as very important. What is important are the practical consequences of activity. And what is even more important in terms of the quality of life is personal integrity and an aesthetic appreciation for living kinesis: Not to change the subject too dramatically, but how did you get interested in Santayana? saatkamp: One of the classes I took during my first semester at Vanderbilt was a course taught by John Lachs on naturalism. We read Santayana’s Scepticism and Animal Faith, and I was amazed both by the quality and the force of the argument. Santayana clearly had written the book with a Spanish wit. And although Santayana was wrestling with the same problems that Russell,

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Carnap, and others were, he did it so clearly and with a smile on his face. He began a foundationalist approach using the Cartesian method of reducing everything to that which is indubitable. Having succeeded, he found that which is indubitable—​that momentary experience which Russell, Carnap, and others had talked about. He then smiles and says that we have it, we’ve found what’s indubitable, and the only difficulty is that there’s nothing there to believe. There is no way to base any knowledge on this type of momentary experience. Then he turns to a naturalism, to animal faith. Scepticism and Animal Faith was the captivating force for me. I did a paper on Santayana’s notion of animal faith for that class, and two years later I began my dissertation on Santayana’s concept of animal faith. I thought, as Arthur Danto had said in 1963, that Santayana approached many philosophical problems and resolved them in a much better way than contemporary philosophical writers. He did so with a language, a style, and an approach that is different from current acceptable philosophical writing, but I found it very much to my liking. And I also, quite frankly, thought that if I did a dissertation on Santayana, I never would feel guilty about reading his poetry, novel, or cultural criticism to break the intensity of doing the philosophical work. kinesis: Could you say a little about the Santayana critical edition? saatkamp: It is a twenty-​volume critical edition being published by mit Press and supported by the National Endowment for Humanities. We have published four volumes to date: Persons and Places (1986), The Sense of Beauty (1988), Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1989), and The Last Puritan (1994). We have an international editorial board, and we have had very close relations with the other critical editions of Dewey, James, and Peirce. Critical editions are interesting endeavors because they are lifetime undertakings. A  person begins a critical edition knowing that if the funding continues, it’s a lifetime work. In fact, prior to computers it was often several lifetimes. Now with the use of electronic media, one can usually finish a critical edition within one lifetime. They are called critical editions because the editors are asked to use their critical judgment about what the author intended to be published. For example, Santayana’s autobiography (Persons and Places), which was the best-​ selling book in the United States in 1945, had a checkered publication history, something not terribly unusual. When we first compared the autograph manuscript with the published versions, we ended up with over 600 typed pages of differences between the published versions and the manuscript. The critical editor researches all these variants, in part, by reading all the letters related to the text and determining the history of the text. Finally, the editor determines

210 Chapter 16 whether Santayana was the author of these variants or if they are unauthorized changes. It is not unusual for publishers to alter a text for a variety of reasons: preference in wording and style, misreading of a manuscript, fear of lawsuits, mistranslations of other languages, fear of offending someone, etc. When finished, one publishes a work that is, in the critical judgment of the editor, the best representation of what Santayana would have wished to have published. All research and editorial decisions are documented in the editorial apparatus, that is, all the variants are listed and all editorial decisions about them are indicated. As a result of this concerted scholarship, critical editions form the central text of research for that particular author. Some of our volumes are multi-​book volumes. His autobiography was actually three books; which we published in one volume according to his wishes. The Life of Reason will be five books published separately. The letters will be four books at least, maybe five.2 So all in all, we’ll have approximately thirty-​ five books in the edition representing a lot of hard work by a lot of people. kinesis: I suspect there’s probably nothing that has given more trouble to students of Santayana than his use of the word “essence,” the fact that he was using this seemingly archaic conception in the twentieth century. Could you address that and how it’s different from a mystical conception? saatkamp: When Santayana used the term “essence,” it was a term that other philosophers were using at the time. But others thought of an essence as a particular entity, that is, in referring to an essence you were talking about some “thing.” For Santayana, talk about an essence is best understood as talk about a universal. One is not talking about a particular object or entity that is an existent thing. But universals are nevertheless real—​colors (blue, white, red, green) and qualities (beauty, pureness, the good)—​are universals. That is Santayana’s basic meaning of the term essence, but there are many other ways he employs the term. In Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana focuses on the objects of awareness, what we are aware of in a shortest moment of consciousness. This immediate, conscious experience consists of intuition (a moment of awareness) and an object, and the object is an essence. An essence, in this sense, is simply whatever is immediately given, and in that immediate experience there is nothing we can say about it. But as soon as you begin to interpret the given as blue or white, or in some conceptual structure, then you are talking about the universal. And there is nothing mysterious about it. 2 [Editors’ note: The letters were eventually published in eight volumes].

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Santayana spends a good deal of time distinguishing between his essences and Platonic ones. Platonic essences have a metaphysical status; they are real objects in a non-​natural world. They also are casually related to the natural world providing form for substance. Whereas, for Santayana, essences are mere universals; they have no ontological status in any physical world—​or in any other world, since there is no other world than the physical world. And secondly they have no causal force in the world, they are simply universals in the Aristotelian sense of universals. When you move to a more contemporary philosophy, Santayana’s notion of essence could be contrasted with sense-​datum theory. A  number of people thought Santayana, when he was talking about essences, was talking about sense data. But once again, Santayana takes some pains to point out that he’s not talking about sense-​data at all; he’s not talking about objects or anything that is in fact open to sensory perception. Rather, he is talking about universals. Santayana does say, in his usual Spanish wit, that of all the terms he used, essence caused him more difficulties than any of the others. And, at the same time, he says the term essence has a perfectly good and understandable philosophical history tracing from the time of Plato up through the time of Russell. This history and Santayana’s use of the term, he believes, should not have caused so much difficulty in understanding. kinesis: Probably it was not helpful to write a book and call it Realms of Being, which immediately suggested different metaphysical realms of reality. saatkamp: Right. At one point, Santayana says that the titles of his books may be misleading and that he never should be thought of as a metaphysician. He was trying to work out the common-​sense structures of human imagination, and the types of grammar that he suggests in terms of essence, matter, spirit, truth, have no ontological status. They’re simply categories of human thought that he found helpful in talking about the world. kinesis: But there’s even a poem, “To a Metaphysician.” That was something I wanted to ask about. I’ve heard Santayana described by Dr. Tom Alexander as a competent Edwardian poet. Do you think the poetry plays any significant part in the philosophy of Santayana? saatkamp:  I think it does. There are several really marvelous poems…very moving poems. There is a poem to a soldier who was killed in wwi, one of Santayana’s most moving poems. Being Spanish, Santayana was in a unique position during the Spanish-​American War, and he wrote two poems that are superb social criticisms of the United States (“Uncle Sammy’s Wild Oats” and “Spain in America”). There’s also his most quoted sonnet, his third one. It has

212 Chapter 16 the line, “It is not wisdom to be only wise” [Euripides, The Bacchae] which is a partial translation from a Greek poem that now has a unique history. Hampshire College took that line and translated it into Latin for their school motto. So the poetry is a significant aspect of Santayana’s life and thought. And I want to say a bit more about that later, but it’s also important to realize that Santayana’s own view was that his poetry was not really top-​notch. When his first book of sonnets was published, the Harvard Monthly had a hard time finding someone to review it. And Santayana volunteered to do it, but anonymously. So one has the ironic and humorous feature of an anonymous review of poems by the author of the poems—​Santayana enjoyed both the humor and the irony of this. In the review, he is very critical of his writing. There is a line to the effect that the author is too philosophical to be a good poet. And Santayana, in several letters, explains why in 1904 he primarily stopped writing poetry. Though after 1904 there were occasional poems, like the one to the soldier in wwi. Even on his deathbed in 1952 he was translating Latin poems. He was blind, almost deaf, and dying from cancer, but from memory he translated Latin poems into English. So poetry was very significant for Santayana, but he recognized that his own style—​a style used by Harvard students or celebrational occasions during Santayana’s student days—​was not gifted. The reason he gave up poetry in 1904 was that he felt that philosophy was far more significant for him. Poetic expression was not sufficient enough for him to give voice to his philosophical interest. Just after 1904 he published one of his major works. The Life of Reason, in five volumes, and from then on his principal publications were philosophical works or cultural criticism. kinesis: He was also involved in the Harvard Lampoon…as a cartoonist? saatkamp: Yes, as a cartoonist. kinesis: Though I’m not sure that it’s terribly relevant to the philosophy… saatkamp: Actually, in a sense it is. The popular image of Santayana is as a recluse, someone isolated who didn’t like the company of others. For the young and middle-​aged Santayana, this is far from the truth. As a student of Harvard, he was a member of numerous clubs, twenty-​two I believe, and president of several. He helped found the Harvard Monthly and, I think, the Harvard Lampoon. His cartoons often lampooned the faculty. His students report that he had an incredible sense of humor. And his activities during the twenty-​something years he was at Harvard, both as student and faculty member, were wide-​ranging. Even then he was something of a celebrated person, in Boston and New York principally, and he often traveled for social and philosophical gatherings.

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It is Santayana’s autobiography, pulled together when he was nearly eighty years old, that provides a more reclusive, pensive, and less outgoing Santayana. The difference between the ages of eighty and eighteen, when he was an undergraduate, or between eighty and forty-​eight, when he retired from Harvard, account for the softening of his active life at Harvard. By the time he was almost eighty, he had developed a much more reclusive, quiet, and protected life for a variety of reasons. It would be hard to find someone more engaged and more active as a student and faculty member at Harvard. His political and philosophical interests, and his work with students (T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Walter Lippmann, and many others) kept him quite active and highly respected. In fact, some former students who wanted to come for the fiftieth anniversary of Santayana’s graduating class, wrote to Harvard and said they would come on one condition: that George Santayana would be there, and, of course, Santayana never came. Santayana, as a young professor, was incredibly engaged, active, and genuinely sought after. When he left—​this is an important item in terms of understanding Santayana—​colleagues had a hard time understanding how someone could leave what they considered the center of education in the world. They thought of Harvard as somehow privileged in its position. Santayana had planned his retirement since 1894, setting aside money, and working towards it. He found academic life not conducive to serious writing, too focused on professional and businesslike improvements, and he found the twentieth-​century developments of Harvard’s academic life too commercial and too businesslike to be truly intellectual. Santayana thought that the view of Harvard as the center of intellectual life was parochial, a kind of American provincialism. He genuinely enjoyed places like Paris, London, Rome, the Riviera, and Spain. He thought they were marvelous places to live, and, after careful and long-​term planning, he set out to enjoy life and writing. It’s also important to know that no one wanted him to leave Harvard. He announced his retirement in 1909, and was asked not to retire. In 1910 he again said he would retire, and the President of the university asked him not to retire, and he agreed to let him spend one year teaching in Europe and one year at Harvard. In fact, the letter basically said Harvard would work out any time arrangement with time divided as Santayana wished. Santayana agreed to one year in Paris teaching at the Sorbonne, and he liked the Parisian setting and his colleagues there. But he said in his letter to the President that he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to keep his bargain and come back to Harvard. And he didn’t.

214 Chapter 16 His mother died in 1912, apparently with Alzheimer’s disease. He spent the last two years of her life visiting her with great frequency. He also made arrangements for his half-​sister (Josefina), who may have been retarded, to return to Spain to live with Susana, Santayana’s other half-​sister. When all was settled and his mother’s condition was a foregone conclusion, he retired. Shortly after, his mother died. As early as 1918, Harvard offered him an endowed chair to return. In the 1920s other offers came from Harvard and several other American and European universities. As late as the 1930s he was again offered an endowed chair at Harvard. All of these he politely rejected, having left the academic life and America for good. In 1936 he appeared on the front of Time magazine, and his novel The Last Puritan, was the bestselling book in the United States for about six months in 1936, as well as his autobiography, Persons and Places, in 1945. kinesis: When I  introduce him to people who are not philosophers, I  tell them that he is the only philosopher I’ve ever heard of who had not one but two book-​of-​the-​month club selections. Now, there was more you wanted to say about poetry. saatkamp: Poetry and the spiritual life. Suppose one asks where does Santayana fit in American thought, that is, to what extent is Santayana a part of the classical pragmatic movement of Peirce, James and Dewey? Well, he’s clearly a part of that movement with his focus on action and on pragmatic value—​the notion that our knowledge of truth about the world is determined by pragmatic outcomes. But he’s not a part of the pragmatic movement in the sense that he’s genuinely a realist and a naturalist and thinks that the pragmatists focus too much on human ingenuity and human experience. There’s one other way in which he’s both a part of pragmatism and not a part of it. There’s a tragedy, I believe, in American pragmatism. Something important is lost from the last part of the nineteenth through the twentieth century. In the last part of the nineteenth century there was a major focus on, for lack of a better word, what Santayana calls spirituality—​a sense of the integrity of the individual, a sense in which self-​knowledge permits one to live well and enjoy life. Santayana’s greatest criticism of America, of American thought and American students, is that they are not able to enjoy life. There is a tremendous bustle of energy, industry, enthusiasm, yet a loss of the quality of life itself. For Santayana it’s that spirituality, it’s that self-​knowledge, it’s that personal integrity that is very important. It’s what makes life worth living. That theme, which was so much a part of Peirce, Royce, and James, seems to have been lost when the pragmatic movement entered the twentieth century. Santayana remains the one person standing with the flagpole in hand and staking his ground that

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there is a major aspect to human existence being overlooked by contemporary philosophy: the quality of life, the spirituality of life in which art and action are meshed together. The spiritual life sets humans apart from other animals, not industry and work, or tools. It is this qualitative aesthetic experience that makes life worth living. The role of the philosopher, in Dewey particularly, became that of a statesman, of one who’s trying to control and change structures in order to make the world better for humans. Santayana does not believe philosophers will have much success as statesmen. The role of philosophy is to interpret, to enable individuals to understand, and understanding may lead to personal and social integrity, but that is dependent on many factors outside of human control. If this spiritual integrity occurs, it is a natural occurrence, it cannot be forced. In his novel, Santayana plays two characters against each other: Oliver, the American, and Mario, the European. It is interesting that Santayana often distinguished himself from his American ties by noting his European heritage. Oliver and Mario meet Santayana in the novel and discuss his philosophy, but it is decided that Mario does not need to take Santayana’s classes. Oliver, over a period of time, comes to a form of self-​knowledge, but it’s a self-​knowledge that is typically American from Santayana’s perspective. It never quite lets one enjoy doing something at the time one is doing it. Oliver, like most Americans, is goal-​driven; life is seen as a means-​end construct with every end, once achieved, viewed simply as another means. Mario, the European, seems to enjoy every moment of life with seemingly few concerns. He delights in the natural, quotidian features of life, sexuality, music, friendship, etc. For Santayana that aspect of life is extremely important. Santayana believes that the delight in living has been lost in the industrial grind of the American enthusiasm to produce. Primarily, Santayana sees Americans as mistaking ends for means. We are like the miser who lives like a poor man in order to be rich. We mistakenly believe that the more one has, the better life will be. But the production of goods does not necessarily mean that we will live better. Quality of life is built on integrity, the enjoying of each moment, not just looking forward to something that might be gained materially. A central focus for Santayana, and an aspect that is largely missing in contemporary American philosophy, is this sense of the art of living, a sense of the delight that is a part of human existence. kinesis: Is there anything further which you would like to say about his aesthetics? saatkamp: The important thing about his aesthetics is that it has a two-​ pronged feature, which is very typical of Santayana. Suppose someone wanted

216 Chapter 16 to explain aesthetic sentiments, Santayana would say any explanations are based in the sciences, natural and social. For such explanations one would turn to physiology, and to the structure of our physical makeup and its interaction with the environment. Santayana sees no reason why you could not give a fully developed causal account of aesthetic experiences. However, it may be very complex and that may make the likelihood of such an explanation not very high, but in principle there’s no reason why you cannot explain human action through these causal accounts. However, the explanation is not the same thing as the conscious experience. And the experience is something that is valuable in and of itself. It’s something that is inherently valuable: the experience of beauty, the experience of good, the qualitative experience of personal integrity. You can’t explain it, obviously, from a causal perspective, but the experience of it is what makes human life unique and worth living. kinesis: One last thing, it seemed to me that the common ground between Santayana and Dewey, if one is to be found, is probably going to be found in aesthetics. saatkamp: Actually I think the common grounds are wider than that. Dewey’s naturalism is very close to Santayana’s naturalism. Santayana’s is just farther reaching; it’s really a materialism. If you were just talking about human nature, then Santayana and Dewey are almost fully in agreement. But Santayana believes that his own philosophy more squarely places the human being in the framework of the natural world as one animal among other animals, as one physical entity among other physical entities. He believes that his naturalism does not rest so heavily on human institutions, and he tends to see Dewey as more of a humanist than a naturalist. In the aesthetic area, they obviously have parallels as well, but I think that those parallels rely on the naturalism of both. Santayana was not as politically active as Dewey. But then there’s this marvelous letter from Sidney Hook to Santayana in the 1930s during the Trotsky trials in Moscow. Santayana has been asked to sign a petition, and he declines. His response to Hook is telling, noting that such actions seem more appropriate for the Anglo-​Saxon world. Hook writes in his letter something like, “Being remote from politics does not mean that you are removed or insensitive to them.” And Santayana is in total agreement with that. He simply says that he believes Trotsky can fend for himself and does not need the defense of other people. And he notes that as much as he is in agreement with materialism and even of the Soviet type, signing a petition is not something that he feels would be a natural part of his work since he is in Rome and is a Spanish citizen; it does not come from a natural structure of which he is a part.

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The Delight of the Critical Edition of Reason in Society 1

Two Inquiries

Reviewing a critical edition involves at least two inquiries. First, is the published text based on the best research, scholarship and decisions that meet the established standards for critical editions? Second, what is the value of the unmodernized text for contemporary thought? The quick response to the first question is clearly yes, and while the response to the second question is also quite positive, it is also more complicated. 1.1 The Scholarship of the Critical Edition The fundamental rationale for a critical edition is to publish the final intentions of the author in an unmodernized version resulting in a text that best reflects the author’s established judgments as documented in the critical edition. The principles and research involved in critical editions are intricate and complicated, and they require the utmost scholarly rigor. One may find a detailed and thorough account of this scholarship in the “Textual Commentary,”1 but here is a very brief account of the scholarship involved in producing the critical edition of Reason in Society. Choosing a copy-​text is essential. Normally, the copy-​text is the one closest to the author’s original work, such as a manuscript or a first impression of the first edition. The rationale for a copy-​text is found in the work of Sir Walter Greg2 whose work helps explain the scholarship of critical editions and how they differ from historical editions. Thomas Tanselle also explicates the copy-​ text approach in two articles that were written near the inception of the Santayana Edition.3 Tanselle was an important influence in the development of The Works of George Santayana, and he was kind enough to spend time with 1 George Santayana, The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress:  Reason in Society (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2013), 183–​210. 2 Sir Walter Greg, “The Rationale of Copy-​Text,” Studies in Bibliography, 3 (1950–​51): 19–​36. 3 See Thomas G. Tanselle, “Greg’s Theory of Copy-​Text and Editing of American Literature,” Studies in Bibliography, 28, (1975):  167–​229; and “Some Principles for Editorial Apparatus,” Studies in Bibliography, 25 (172): 41–​88.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_020

218 Chapter 17 me as I began to hone my knowledge and expertise in editing critical editions in 1976. One must locate and examine all relevant, extant material, and that is no small task. Well over one hundred institutions and individuals have texts, papers, letters, and other relevant materials relating to Reason in Society. The editors did a thorough job of finding and examining all relevant material. This discovery phase was enhanced by the edition’s forty years of experience in locating all relevant Santayana material beginning with the publication of George Santayana:  A Bibliographical Checklist, 1880–​1980 and the annual updates published in Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society. Since no manuscripts for Reason in Society were extant, the editors chose the first edition, first printing of Scribner’s 1905 publication as the copy-​text. A diagram of the full history of the work’s publication is found on page 197 of the edition. Locating all extant material is only the beginning of an extensive and intensive process. One must also draw up a complete list of alterations between the chosen copy-​text and any other version of the text, decide which of these variants are authorial and which are not, and finally make judgments about what were Santayana’s final intentions pertaining to each alteration discovered in the research. Compiling a list of alterations from the copy-​text is also no small task. There is a minimum of two, independent sight collations of relevant material against the chosen copy-​text. Normally, each sight collation is conducted by two editors with one holding and silently reading the copy-​text while the other person reads aloud the other text being considered. Differences between the two texts are clearly noted and a detailed listing of the differences is clearly designated by the readers. Sight collations are conducted by well-​trained individuals consisting of at least two independent teams. The independence of each collation provides additional assurances of the accuracy of the final listing of alterations. When both texts to be compared are in published form, there are also machine collations that prove particularly helpful in determining differences in editions as well as impressions of the printed text. The end result is a list of alterations from the copy-​text. Sometimes there are significant differences between the copy-​text and other publications. This was certainly true of Santayana’s autobiography, Persons and Places, where the original manuscript differed considerably from the first publications and there were more than 600-​typed pages of changes that included making the volume consistent with the publisher’s house styling, censorship of sensitive issues, elimination of marginal headings, broken type, and substituting English translations (sometimes mistranslations) of foreign terms.

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Fortunately, Reason in Society, did not have such challenges and the extensive research resulted in only twenty-​nine emendations to the copy-​text involving nineteen substantive changes and ten accidentals. A discussion of the adopted readings may be found in three pages of the volume.4 The editors of this volume deserve the highest praise for their thorough, rigorous and conservative approach to this critical edition resulting in a volume that comes as close as humanly possible to Santayana’s final intentions for the work. 1.2 The Historical and Intellectual Value of Reason in Society Reason in Society, along with the other four books of The Life of Reason, is of considerable historical significance in terms of American philosophy, naturalism, and the development of American thought and literature. It established a permanent place for Santayana in American philosophy, and these five books remained one of his best-​known and widely reviewed works until his death in 1952. On a biographical note, it led to Harvard promoting Santayana being from Assistant Professor to Professor in 1907, including doubling his salary to $4,000 per year. The intellectual value of Reason in Society for contemporary society is, I fear, underestimated and underappreciated. Santayana’s observations were both intellectual as well as based on first-​hand knowledge of world societies, cultures and governments. His observations occurred at a time preceding World War I, when many European and Asian countries reflected a patriotic nationalism and populism that led to their being proud of their origins and also led to an isolation from many other cultures and nations. The rise of leadership leading to autocratic societies and even dictatorships seemed to be nesting in both the Western and the Eastern world. One may conjecture that there are some similarities to our own time when the rise of populism and nationalism appear to be on the increase. Global and regional alliances such as nato, the Paris Climate Agreement, and the United Nations are all being called into question by major partners in those alliances, particularly by the current leadership in the U.S. The Middle East likewise now appears to have two rival alliances, one led by Iran and the other by Saudi Arabia, and they are divided by religion, political ideology, and geographical strategic interests that are often in conflict. At the turn of the twentieth century, Santayana saw first-​hand many of these elements in the Occidental world, and some of Reason in Society reflects his observations, analysis, concerns and recommendations. To be fair, it

4 George Santayana, The Life of Reason or the Phases of Human Progress:  Reason in Society, 211–​13.

220 Chapter 17 is important to note that his analysis is based on an individualistic approach that some critics find outdated, aristocratic, disconcerting, even unpatriotic and un-​American. But his is an honest approach to the issues he observed, and there are many insights and even recommendations that can positively inform our current societies. To understand his approach, one needs to have a grasp of the intellectual heritage of this volume as well as his personal experiences leading him to writing The Life of Reason. 1.3 Intellectual Prelude to Reason in Society On May 25, 1904 Santayana sent his first installment of The Life of Reason to Scribner’s noting there were four more books to follow. He referred to this work as his magnum opus.5 These five books were the culmination of intellectual and personal currents that began much earlier, enlarging his view of life and the world while developing is unique brand of naturalism. At the time, naturalism was little known or studied at Harvard or in other American universities, and for that reason Santayana’s work is a pivotal point in American thought. The Life of Reason is rooted in Santayana’s expanding naturalism and grounded in Plato, Aristotle and Spinoza. During the late nineteenth century at Harvard, Plato and Aristotle were studied principally as idealist and often considered proto-​Christian.6 Santayana’s Walker Fellowship to Berlin (1886), shared with Charles Augustus Strong, introduced him to Greek ethics as a form of reason, and later (1896) during a more systematic study at Trinity College, Cambridge, with the Plato scholar Henry Jackson, he discerned not only Plato’s ideal of reason but also the naturalism of Aristotle where beauty, the ideal, and reasonable order were the products of the natural world. Earlier his reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, sparked his interest in the history of thought, and for several years he taught a Harvard course on the history of philosophy in the 1890s. Santayana’s interests in historical figures and in naturalism led to “the composition of The Life of Reason.”7 Santayana’s indebtedness to Spinoza is evident and even heralded by Santayana. Spinoza enabled Santayana to see the natural universe as an ultimate. Instead of nature being seen apart from reason, reason is viewed as a part of

5 The Letters of George Santayana, Book One [1868–​1909], William G. Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2001), 264. 6 George Santayana, “A Brief History of My Opinions,” in Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal Statements, vol. ii (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1930), 249. 7 Ibid.

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nature. Spinoza was Santayana’s “master and model” in understanding the natural base of morality.8 But Spinoza did not satisfy Santayana in respect to “how humane and representative” was “his sense for the good, and how far, by his disposition or sympathetic intelligence” was he able to “appreciate all types of excellence toward which life may be directed?”9 In Reason in Society, Santayana opens the door to naturalism as the basis for morality and clearly moves to appreciate the many types of human excellence. Santayana’s appreciation for all human excellence sets him apart from many of his American and European colleagues, and he is especially critical of repressive forms of government and industry that may be found in many societies including economically and scientifically advanced cultures. These intellectual preludes led to this book bringing naturalism to the United States and led to naturalism’s resurgence in many other parts of the world’s literary and scholarly culture. His respect for the diversity of human excellence is an important element that did not lead him to idealize American democracy or the capitalistic, industrial enterprise that he thought was too prevalent among his American contemporaries, particularly John Dewey. Instead, he was very critical of America and its form of democracy and capitalism. He sometimes did this with pointed humor as in his poem, “Young Sammy’s First Wild Oats,” and more systematically in The Genteel Tradition. Although most frequently thought of as an American philosopher, for many readers it is a surprise that he never became an American citizen but retained his Spanish citizenship his entire life. Even in Spain, Franco’s regime saw him as a traitor and forbade him to be read or written about. Indeed, he was referred to as a traitor and an atheist by some prominent Spanish writers. Throughout his life he was always something of an outsider no matter where he lived. His novel, The Last Puritan (1936), led to his being nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, but Scribner’s and perhaps others thought he did not receive the prize because it was discovered that he was not American. However, The Life of Reason brought him to the forefront of American intellectual development, and his foundational place in American thought was permanent. Even as late as the 1951, Scribner’s asked Santayana to edit and publish a one-​volume edition of The Life of Reason. Although Santayana worked on some of this one-​volume edition, the larger task fell to Daniel Cory because of Santayana’s health, illness and death in 1952.

8 George Santayana, Persons and Places:  Fragments of Autobiography (Cambridge:  The mit Press, 1986), 235. 9 Ibid.

222 Chapter 17 1.4 Personal Prelude to Reason in Society Santayana’s knowledge of the world and of cultures was certainly more than intellectual. He was a world traveler. Although he was a Spanish citizen teaching at Harvard, by 1905 he was becoming a more like a world citizen familiar with many cultures and societal structures. His early childhood was spent in Ávila, Spain. In his ninth year, he came with his father to Boston in June 1872 to join his mother and his Boston family. His mother had earlier moved from Ávila to Boston in 1868 or 1869. His father returned to Spain after only a few months in Boston finding it not a place he wanted to live. Santayana began his annual travels to Europe at the end of his sophomore year (June 1883) at Harvard College. He first returned to see his father, traveling to Ávila and other Spanish cities as well as Paris. Then his travels expanded significantly through the remainder of his undergraduate, graduate, and professorial years. He spent many summers in Europe, principally in England, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Between 1904–​1906, Santayana spent twenty-​seven months abroad, including the only sabbatical he ever took (1904–​1905), traveling through Europe and the Middle East. He visited many of his usual places in Europe and also traveled to Sicily, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Damascus, Baalbeck, Beirut, Athens, Piraeus, Constantinople, Budapest, Vienna, and he had an extended stay in Paris where he became a Hyde Lecturer at the Sorbonne. During his intellectual and personal development, he began analyzing the rational prospects for individual development in different societies. He wondered how societies are formed, why are they so often repressive to individual development, and could there be a rational approach to an orderly society that fostered individual development and the pursuit of ideals in the natural world. He was pressed by questions:  What are ideal goals in a natural world? What is possible in organizing a society so that individuals have the highest prospects for personal development? What impediments are there in societies for individual growth and development? And as he traveled and thought, he became more and more aware of the dangers in European nationalist societies as well as the industrial repression of individuals that was rampant through much of the Occidental world and the United States. Even at Harvard, he thought that the overarching business interests of American enterprise were replacing genuine intellectual, artistic, and scientific inquiry. By the mid-​1890s, he began planning for his early retirement from Harvard and his move to Europe in order to make progress on his own ideals and pursuit of a natural life of reason. In short, his travels led to first-​hand experiences of the many human excellences possible in many different society orders and to his realization of what was possible for his own personal life of reason.

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1.5 The Generative Order of Reason in Society Santayana’s approach to societies focuses on the individual and personal achievement. For some readers, his approach is too aristocratic because Santayana seems to assume there is an essential freedom that can be governed by a rational approach to living well, and he believes, as did Aristotle and Plato, that there was a natural inequality in human life and societies. He notes that natural inequality is not the problem but suffering is. It is clear that not every society and certainly not every person has the means or the opportunities to choose one’s lifestyle and circumstances. As we shall see later, the Aristotelian ideal of fairness was his model for honoring natural inequality. Santayana had the means and circumstances for choosing his own way of life, and he began considering what were his best, most rational options in the world as he knew it. Yes, this is perhaps aristocratic particularly if one assumes he thought everyone had the opportunity to live as he and his friends did. But it is perhaps not so aristocratic when one reads the many passages he writes regarding the subjection of individuals, of women, and of workers in the societies he discusses. Indeed, it may be that Santayana did maintain that a life of reason may be available in many societies regardless of the circumstances but he clearly saw the limitations placed on individuals in repressive societies where liberty and reason were not permitted, prized or rewarded. Indeed, he notes that the ideal aristocracy is not Plato’s Republic “for that Utopia is avowedly the ideal only for fallen and corrupt states, since luxury and injustice, we are told, first necessitated war, and the guiding idea of all the Platonic regimen is military efficiency.”10 There is a natural inequality based on individual natures and relationships. The family is his model. For example, each family member does not have equal standing. The child is dependent on parents, the elderly grandparents no longer have the same place in family structures as they once did. But it is possible that every member experiences happiness in this natural inequality. He writes: “The ideal state and the ideal universe should be a family where all are not equal, but where all are happy.”11 The ideal society is one where the Aristotelian sense of fair treatment is in place even with natural inequalities being a part of every society, even the ideal one. Therefore the ideal of society can never involve the infliction of injury on anybody for any purpose. Such an ideal would propose for a goal

10 Santayana, The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Society, 60. 11 Ibid., 71.

224 Chapter 17 something out of equilibrium, a society which even if established could not maintain itself; but an ideal life must not tend to destroy its ideal by abolishing its own existence … it is impossible on moral grounds that injustice should subsist in the ideal.12 Can such a society ever exist? No. But one can use it as the model that may enable us to achieve better relationships, government and civilizations. 1.6 Individual Growth and Political Action The notion of fairness as the model for societies is both historical and also prescient. It is rooted in Aristotle but prophetic of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Indeed, Rawls in speaking of Santayana notes that Santayana’s “natural aristocracy is a possible interpretation of the two principles of justice.”13 For Santayana, the natural inequality among humans enables each person to achieve their own excellence in a system that is fair to all and permits all to achieve what they merit based on an equality of opportunity. Rawls, of course, rejects a pure meritocracy and develops his difference principle, supporting any economic or social inequality only if it also increases the standing of the least advantaged or minimizes their losses. Santayana did not consider such fine tuning for his conception of fairness, and since his was an ideal to be achieved, it was unlikely to be found in any existing society but rather was an ideal to be encouraged. If one reads Santayana expecting to find a commitment to political action or an organizing principle to bring groups together to fight against injustice, then one will be disappointed. There is no call to action for societies, there are only ideals for individuals to act upon based on their own individuality and circumstances. Santayana’s approach to understanding world societies is based on individuals. Individuals form the links of society first by falling in love, by producing children and families that then expanding to larger societal orders of government and civilizations. The process is natural, guided by our physical propensities, desires and delights. The chapters of Reason in Society are generative, explicating our society begins and how ideals naturally arise in societies. The chapter titles provide this generative account: I. Love; ii. Family; iii. Industry, Government, and War; iv. The Aristocratic Ideal; v. Democracy; vi. Free Society; vii. Patriotism; and viii. Ideal Society. In summarizing Reason in Society, Santayana indicates there are three stages to society: the natural, the free, and the ideal. His focus is clearly on individual

12 Ibid. 13 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 74.

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development within social settings. The natural state of society functions to produce individuals who are equipped with the ability and characteristics of moral freedom, that is, to produce individuals who may choose on their own, acting on their own moral authority and responsibility. Love and the family are the environments for these achievements, with love being the foundational, natural bonding force of society and a principal good of society. The natural instincts that bring individuals together through love also bind parents and their children. Naturally individuals become members of families, tribes, and larger cultures such as cities and state governments. These associations bring about ideal goals of love and loyalty. One who truly loves and belongs to a society is open to reason and a liberal life focusing on individual development and rational ideals. Natural societies such as family and economic and political associations are more often instinctual than freely chosen. But such societies may foster and encourage individuals who may freely choose to form societies based on common interests. Such free individuals may also choose to go further and envision ideal societies where truth and beauty are the aims, independent of other human beings. The free society is achieved through personal and emotional bonds that give rise to friendship, a sense of unanimity and belonging that is grounded in some ideal interest. These accidental characteristics of oneself and one’s society are transcended in an ideal society that exceeds parochial associations and goals and where the ideal interests of the mind take precedence with excellence, beauty and truth being our individual aims. “Religion, art, and science are the chief spheres in which ideal companionship is found. It remains for us to traverse these provinces in turn and see to what extent the Life of Reason may flourish there.”14 1.7 Governments are Like the Weather If all human actions are the result of material forces, then human organizations, societies and governments are as well. For Santayana all governments are natural and arise out of their physical cultural circumstances, and wherever one finds oneself, one must adapt as best one can. Santayana sees adapting to government and changes in governmental systems as similar to adapting to the weather. As an individual, one must adjust to the weather, protect oneself, and seek a good life in a good climate. The best and the worst governments are natural products and individuals finding themselves in tyrannical circumstances should adjust as one would to extreme weather. As Santayana writes: 14 Santayana, The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Society, 127.

226 Chapter 17 Now the most tyrannical government, like the best, is a natural product maintained by an equilibrium of natural forces. It is simply a new mode of mechanical energy to which the philosopher living under it must adjust himself as he would to the weather. But when the vehicle of nature’s inclemency is a heartless man, even if the harm done be less, it puts on a new and a moral aspect. The source of injury is then not only natural but criminal as well, and the result is a sense of wrong added to misfortune. It must needs be that offence come, but woe to him by whom the offence cometh. He justly arouses indignation and endures remorse.15 1.8 Democracy Leads to Monarchy Democratic forms of government are natural, and they also have natural consequences that one should prepare for just like preparing for different kinds of weather. All forms of government are repressive and tend to reinforce natural or imagined inequalities. Democracies come to the forefront because of inequalities, and the democratic effort to enforce equality usually leads to repression and often the rise of dictatorial leaders. Santayana’s view of American democracy was skeptical. He saw US democracy as fostering the nineteenth and twentieth century industrialism where workers strained to make a living while a few captains of industry flourished. And even the captains of industry spent their lives working on activity, or making money and being occupied with the means for production. Such a life was not conducive to a focus on the principal ends that make life worthwhile. Furthermore, democracy’s forced equality is most likely to turn into a dictatorship or monarchy. In this, Santayana’s view reflects the ancient Greek view, but also is a precocious perspective of the upcoming rise of Hitler and Mussolini. One wonders what he would say of the contemporary American political scene where repression and ridicule appear to be trumpeting in much of the Western world. Today, industrialism is fading but technology is ascending. The digital revolution and global communication replaces physical labor in industries with education and technique. But the digital revolution may seem no less repressive for many workers who now spend their time doing many more tasks than was possible in the industrial world and rather than providing more free time, increases one’s productivity as well as one’s working hours. In addition, many manufacturing and sales positions are being replaced by artificial intelligence and its applications. Perhaps Santayana’s view of ai would be the same. If 15

Ibid., 70–​71.

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technological development does not enhance human life, one must choose environments that will. Santayana’s would ask whether the digital revolution produces forms of life and government that are worthwhile. Technology makes possible widespread communication that may serve to bring the peoples of the world together, but it also has the possibility of widespread disruption and destruction in our world. Communication, electrical power, market indices and activities, travel data and essential personal and public information, food distribution, and more are all subject to technological disruption that could change our lives immediately and for the long run. In addition, massive communication is now possible on small devices such as one’s cell phone and portable computers, but these also have the potential for destruction on a large scale and at the hands of one or only a few people. How does one prepare for such prospects? Where is an environment that would reduce the possibility of such disruption and destruction? 2

Conclusion

If one follows Santayana, each of us must find our own answers to living a life. So where does this leave us? From Santayana’s perspective, one should prepare for governments in a way similar to preparing for weather. Looking for the best climates, preparing for inclement weather, if necessary moving to a different location, and in cases of violent weather, seek shelter as quickly as one can. In mountainous East Tennessee, when trouble is brewing one heads for the hills. The natural tendency of all governments is unfairness and an enforcement of inequality. Government forces many people to be instruments of production or technology who live a demanding schedule fearing scarcity and unfair treatment. Santayana provides little incentive or hope for trying to alter or change the natural unfairness of government. Whatever government replaces another will evolve naturally to a repressive one. The task of the individual is to find the best circumstances that make life worthwhile. Weather and governments come and go, flourish and falter, but the spiritual life of the individual makes living worthwhile even knowing that individual survival is not possible. For those who are involved in social and political movements, Santayana’s individualist response to governments is difficult to swallow. Even so, there is much truth in what he writes. There is turmoil all around us and there always will be. Perhaps the task of living is determining what makes life worthwhile even in the midst of such societies as we find ourselves in. Or, following Santayana, look for places, societies, cultures and nations where one is more likely

228 Chapter 17 to be able to focus on one’s ideals knowing all along that ideals do not exists in the natural world. Basically, from a naturalistic perspective there is no purpose in nature. Materialism is chaos except as we identify patterns and habits in its currents, and our identification of such patterns and habits are projections from our natural instincts and interest. Our ideals are the highest form of living well, and although impossible to achieve for any sustained period, they remain our ideals. Even if this is true, and I suspect it is, this may lead to different approaches depending on one’s physical circumstances. Some people believe, quite naturally, that there is more that we can do than merely pursue individual ideals. These activists believe there is more that will benefit ourselves and our fellow human beings, and they involve themselves in social and political movements, in bettering the circumstances of those near them and far away. Being true to one’s self and one’s circumstances for some may mean direct involvement in changing social and political circumstances. For Santayana, the spiritual life with its ideals of beauty and truth was the principal element that made life worthwhile. For others, it may be shaping and altering one’s community in a way that fosters fairness, including for those whose ideal is the spiritual life as well as for those for whom it is not. Our reaction? If we are rational and relatively free, that is our choice unless natural circumstances take that decision from us.

pa rt 3 Genetic Concerns and the Future of Philosophy

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Introduction to Part 3 Santayana inverted the foundation of philosophy in Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923), sounding a revolutionary note to the understanding of human action. Prior to Santayana, reason was seen by many philosophers as the top of the hierarchy in explaining human activity. Reason set us apart from other animals and inanimate nature. Humans purposely acted on rational principles unlike the natural inclinations of other animal life. The goal of education was to provide the means to achieve judicious approaches to human activity and society as well as to analyze reasons and assess arguments that were the basis for our actions. But Santayana turned all this on its head. In Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana, ironically and perhaps with a smile, pursued the foundation of reason until he came to the “solipsism of the present moment.” This reduction ad absurdum argument leads to the certainty of a conscious moment which, unfortunately, leads nowhere beyond itself. One is confined to a solipsism with no way out, no connection to the world, even to oneself, but only a momentary awareness of whatever is given without any judgment or decision possible. Then, certainly with a smile, Santayana turns to animal faith. The natural, inescapable belief that attempts to give meaning to what is presented to consciousness based on one’s natural animal history and composition. Animal faith is just that, it is a faith not based on reason but on one’s natural proclivities, just as it is with all animals, including human beings. The foundation of our actions is our physicality existing in the natural world, whereas consciousness and reason not only evolve later in our development but are merely aftereffects of our nature, not a basis for actions but the echoes of actions and their natural causes. For Santayana, reason and consciousness are secondary, aftereffects of animals acting in a natural world. Consciousness and reason spring from our physical reality as music springs from a violin. They are caused by the physical interaction of animals with the natural world, interacting based on physical causes that give birth to consciousness, meaning, and reason. What are the causes of our actions? Not reason, but our psyche, Santayana’s term for the human physical being, and its interactions with the physical circumstances of our environment. Even in Santayana’s earlier writings, there are preludes to his more developed view. Arthur Danto’s introduction to The Sense of Beauty (1896) carefully notes the underlying naturalism of Santayana’s aesthetics, and even in sections of the five-​volume The Life of Reason (1905–​6). But Santayana’s strongest themes of his mature views are found in his later writings, particularly in The Realms of Being and its introduction Scepticism and Animal Faith.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_021

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Visually, one might image an historic building that has been in place for centuries suddenly being turned upside down by an earthquake. The fragments of its foundation fragilely hanging above the rest of the upside-​down structure and visible only periodically depending from where one viewed this upturned edifice. For Santayana, this was a more accurate account of human action. Someone might surmise that this means Santayana dismisses reason and consciousness as important elements in human life, but that would be wrong. Perhaps surprisingly, he sees reason and consciousness as celebrational and something that brings unique human delight. Santayana’s account was a disruptive approach to philosophy, and one that was at least a century ahead of his time. His naturalism was thoroughgoing, fully natural, fully causal and, for a time, fully ignored. He wrote of others who called themselves naturalists or pragmatists, noting that their work was still based on rational outlooks. The pragmatists thought that one could examine the outcomes of actions and determine what was best for human societies based on a rational discernment of those outcomes and their benefits. But Santayana thought of these views as more metaphysical and claiming a basis that was an aftereffect rather than the natural foundation of human and animal action. What then could be the rightful work of philosophy and of philosophers if reason is not the basis for action? Did Santayana think his approach was the end of philosophy and how could he now think of consciousness and reason as celebrational? “Is Animal Faith the End of Philosophy?” raises these questions and is an attempt to answer them. Many may find the answer challenging and less than satisfying. But perhaps he is right. Today, some of our present scientific investigations into the role of consciousness and reason in human action reach conclusions like Santayana’s account. Where do such views leave philosophy and our understanding of human action? We have a significant challenge to the role of philosophy and of reason in human life. Indeed, we have a view of philosophy and reason as more like musical symphonies that gain expression from physical interactions with our environment, much like we may view the actions of other animals. And depending on one’s own psyche and circumstances these symphonies may be interpreted and given meanings that vary from one human to another and from one culture to another. Of course, this is problematic. How are we to judge what are the best actions, the best societies, the better alternatives? Are we bound by competing sets of rational symphonies where one has no more solid base than another? All are natural creations. Are the reasons and justifications of the hallucinating patient confined to a mental ward or the sociopath imprisoned for life on an equal scale

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with the “normal, well-​educated, socially responsible” human? I do not think so, although the basis for that judgment, as Santayana suggests, is not based on reason but on the underlying natural features of human existence. So many other questions are raised by Santayana’s turning philosophy on its head:  What then is our role in organizing, directing, and hopefully improving society? Are we like bees in the beehive or wolves in a pack, doing what we were destined to do, looking for food, nourishing ourselves and others and finding our place in a natural hierarchy? What are the roles of our heritable traits found through the science of genetics and our interaction with other animals in the natural world? These questions are raised in the remaining chapters. We live in a world where nationalism and terrorism are on the rise. Is our destiny set or are we able to take actions that might alter predictable outcomes? Is philosophy simply a celebration of life, like a musical symphony, to be enjoyed while one can in moments of delight and passion but not a guiding light for action and discernment? Are we to stand on a philosophical island watching the currents and tides of the world surround us while celebrating the ineffectual sounds of consciousness? Will genetics and other naturalistic approaches be able to uncover the basis for human actions as they seem to be doing for much of other animal action? Perhaps more to the point, What is the point? If we act based on our physical being’s causal interactions with the natural world, what choices do we really have in choosing our future and that of future generations? For me, education is essential to living well, learning from our experiences, and prospering. But what is the role of education if all choices are based mostly on unconscious physical currents in ourselves and our environments. Life is short, so are we simply destined to do what we must and to try and find ways of enjoying life consistent with our natural heritage and environmental interactions? If that is our plight, then it may seem we have few true choices in our world. Perhaps, like Santayana, we should find a way of solitude that permits us to focus on those joyful conscious moments that bring us delight. Santayana’s life was full, resonant with living well, traveling the world, and being revered for his insights, poetry, philosophy, cultural criticism, novel, and autobiography. As a young man and scholar, he was much involved with others, the Harvard societies, fraternities, political gatherings, and college amusements. But he had a change of heart, a metanoia, around 1894, and began planning for his early retirement from Harvard University. The change was subterranean and slow. At the age of forty-​eight, he retired from Harvard in 1912 and spent much of the remainder of his life traveling the world, a vagabond scholar, before finally settling in Rome around 1924 until his death in 1952. He enjoyed life, wrote

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exhaustively of his thoughts and their development, published remarkable insights into the human life through his philosophy, his best-​selling novel (The Last Puritan, 1936) and autobiography (Persons and Places, 1944). But he was disengaged from the world, seeing wars and economic upheavals as natural outcomes of human activity. He experienced the depravity of human life through two world wars and the Spanish Civil War, experienced the loss of family members, friends, and learning of atrocities like the Holocaust. For Santayana, these were not so much surprising revelations of human actions but understandable given our natural heritage and outlook. Santayana’s was one way of life, a life he chose based on his own natural inclinations. And I, for one, delight in his way of living and in his steadfastness to his own nature and the world he lived in. But I could not live such a life. Since I began my work on the critical edition of The Works of George Santayana (mit Press), I have always had by my desk a sketch of Santayana given to me by his grand-​nephew. Santayana’s father, Agustín Santayana, was a trained artist and his grand-​nephew continued that tradition. Hence, all my work had Santayana literally and figuratively looking over my shoulder. I often imagined what he may have said to me if he had actually seen what I was doing. I have been active in politics and the civil rights movement since the early 1960s, hoping one’s actions would lead to a better society. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., described it, I was a part of the ground crew for these movements. In addition, I held a distinguished chair in philosophy, was a department chair and head, dean of liberal arts, chair of a medical school department and president of a state university. I have held professorships in philosophy, philanthropy, medical genetics, pediatrics, and medical ethics. And I have been president of three international professional associations, chair of commissions of the American Council of Education and of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. I have also served on over thirty non-​profit boards, including chairing the Southern New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, and I have received a number of civic awards for my community and scholarly engagement. Looking at Santayana’s portrait above my desk, I sometimes could hear his whisper: What are you doing? Why? Do you not realize that from the perspective of the universe, your actions a small speck of dust that will soon be blown away? I agree with Santayana. There is no lasting meaning to human existence, and as the universe evolves we are only a very small speck in time. However, I  also agree with Santayana that one should be as true to one’s nature as possible and to enjoy life consistent with that. As a person, I have no greater standing in the universe than the sociopath, the psychotic, the autocrat, or any other living animal. But for now, I am what I am. Being a part of one’s community, participating in education, family, and even local, national and

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international relations are important to me. The wellsprings of these actions lie within my being and my relations with the natural world. When I would write general principles for higher education in white papers or in leading conferences, I knew that these were general, and the actions and activities had to be filled in by others working out of a natural sympathy for what I suggested. I knew that some would find my approaches did not express their natural inclinations and habits, others would find them too weak to meet pressing needs, and others may even be offended by them. All of which was natural to our diverse circumstances, but there was also a sense of community, and the professional associations embodied individuals joined together by commonality that elicited joint actions and common causes. I am much closer to the end of life than to the beginning. This is a time when one reflects back on the history of one’s family, of oneself, of one’s culture. These are only reflections, and the realities may have been quite different from one’s memory or even documented history. But, for me, they are like a symphony of my life and I enjoy listening to both the high and low notes. So, I end this book with a brief reflection on a Holocaust Study tour I took with colleagues and two Holocaust survivors in 2013: “We Walk Back in Time to Go Forward.” Perhaps a too optimistic approach to a naturalistic world, but one that recognizes the arational aspects of human nature, its tragedies, and an underlying hope that our natural propensity is to make life worthwhile.

­c hapter 18

Genetics and Pragmatism Genetic and pragmatic explanations seem to march not only to different drums, but in opposite directions. Looking to the past, genetic explanations rely on an analysis of one’s heritable nature to account for current traits and behavior, whereas pragmatic explanations look to the future, relying on the consequential radiations of actions to determine their significance. Combining such explanations produces a Janus face looking in two directions. If there also are two pairs of feet struggling toward opposing destinations, there is little likelihood of making progress by bringing together genetic and pragmatic explanations. On the one hand, one might argue that such a combined approach will not succeed in theory or practice because of internal conflicts. On the other hand, if pragmatism is seen as a future-​oriented, consequentialist position from which one determines the value and significance of genetic explanations, then the two perspectives are compatible, and bringing them together may be viewed as an outcome of the bipolar nature of human life that naturally unites one’s heritage and one’s future. I argue for this latter perspective. Specifically, I maintain that certain characteristics of pragmatism provide (1) the basis for evaluating and understanding genetic explanations of human traits and behavior, (2) a guideline for parents making decisions about the future lives of their children, and (3) a thoughtful assessment of social policies that may be fostered by the new genetics. Finally, I also maintain that the pragmatic position has serious limitations that require consideration. 1

The New Genetics

The success of the well-​publicized Human Genome Project is a basis for concern and hope in the area of human reproduction. If one supposes, as I do, that genetics is the foundation of all animal action, and that, when coupled with environmental assessments, genetic explanations also may provide an adequate account of animal behavior, then the promise and threat of the new genetics become clear. Against the backdrop of repeated difficulties and failures in social policies and social research, the new human genetics may provide practical and specific guidelines for parents and societies that wish to choose characteristics and behavioral patterns for future generations.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_022

238 Chapter 18 To a limited extent, this is already true. Through genetic testing parents can screen out certain possible futures for their children (for example, Tay-​ Sachs disease, Huntington’s disease, Down’s syndrome, and thalassemia) by first detecting a genetic marker for the trait and then either not implanting the embryo (if in vitro fertilization is being used) or aborting the fetus. Negative eugenics of this sort will become more readily available as better techniques are found for determining these characteristics in the early embryo stages and as the Human Genome Project completes its mapping and sequencing tasks. Among the currently available techniques, amniocentesis provides parents with choices they did not have before its development, not only in terms of ruling out certain genetic maladies, but also, more controversially, in determining the sex of their children. But amniocentesis has serious limitations. Amniotic fluid samples are taken through a needle introduced into the uterus between the tenth and sixteenth weeks of pregnancy. There is approximately 0.5 percent risk of miscarriage, and it normally takes a few weeks before the parents have the results of the test. Hence, any parental decisions based on amniocentesis must come in the second trimester, at the earliest. Other alternatives offer quicker information, within days, and earlier testing possibilities, but carry a higher risk of miscarriage. For example, cvs (chorionic villus sampling) is a sampling of the outer layer of the placenta, the chorion, and has approximately 5.5 percent chance of miscarriage. Currently several researchers are developing tests for fetal cells that circulate in maternal blood. If successfully developed, this technique will remove or significantly reduce the risk to the fetus, and parents will have an alternative for gathering considerable information about the developing embryo in the early stages of pregnancy. So far, the tests available are used primarily to rule out horrific and brief futures for children, and there is little, although some, disagreement over the importance of gathering this information for parental use. Who wishes to see a child born who will live a brief and painful life? But obviously the issues become more complex if one focuses on lives that are full but limited (for instance, by Down’s syndrome and Huntington’s disease). As difficult as the present issues are, the difficulties will be raised to new levels as parents become able not only to screen out certain characteristics, but also to include traits in their children they consider positive. Such traits include not only socially privileged ones, such as body build, but perhaps traits of sociability, aggression, intelligence, sexual orientation, and more. Practically, one may argue that if individual citizens have more positive traits, the prospects for a civil society to flourish will be higher. Of course the great concern raised by this possibility is the specter of eugenics and the haunting and ghastly features of Nazi eugenics, a disciplined

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tragedy that chose the parents who could have children and systematically eliminated humans who should not. The new eugenics is changing the focus to choosing future children, not the parents of those children; rather than killing adult humans, the focus is on reducing or eliminating the prospects for negative genetic traits to be carried to the next generation as well as fostering positive genetic traits for future generations. Various approaches eliminate developing embryos in the early stages of development either through in vitro fertilization, in which embryos free of harmful traits are selected over other embryos to be implanted, or by abortion. The status of the embryos not chosen for implantation is already an issue in many in vitro fertilization clinics, and eventually is likely to lead to more precise medical and governmental guidelines. In focusing on choosing children rather than parents, are we making our prospects better than previous eugenic tragedies? Given the history of our successes and failures in shaping the world to human purposes, there is no clear answer to this question, but pragmatism offers more hope than do ideological perspectives now being used to address the promise and problems of the new genetics. Some may think this speculation is fortune-​telling. Little progress in explaining complex human behavior has been accomplished through the new genetics. But the new genetics is new, and the most recent advances offer a chance of detecting and altering traits and behavior (such as aggression and bipolarity) that to date have eluded other types of research and social policies. As evidence and technology become available for choosing the characteristics of children, responsible parents (with the means of doing so) will not ignore these alternatives any more than they knowingly ignore proper nourishment and care. In this sense we are entering a new era of eugenics that, as Philip Kitcher and Glenn McGee argue, seems inevitable for parents who have the best interest of their children at heart.1 How are we to assess the new genetics, and what guidelines may help us in fostering personal choices and social policies? Therein lies the place of pragmatism. In the last few years there have been many advances in understanding genotypes and their resulting phenotypes, particularly in the area of genetic abnormalities. Within a decade these major advances are likely to be viewed as small steps toward a much grander understanding of human actions.

1 See Philip Kitcher, The Lives to Come:  The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996), and Glenn McGee, The Perfect Baby (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997).

240 Chapter 18 Pragmatism offers one approach to evaluate the significance of these advances and to provide a basis for making individual and social decisions. 2

Pragmatism and Genetic Explanations

Pragmatism, like any large intellectual area, is not easy to describe. If one searches for defining characteristics, there are few if any that go unchallenged.2 But there are several earmarks that appear essential to pragmatism and provide a foundation for assessing the new genetics. Two of the most general characteristics of pragmatism are its general view of philosophy and its nonideological tenor. Pragmatic philosophy focuses on problems of human finitude, placing human action in the context of its cultural and natural environment; it is a philosophy not bound by disciplinary lines, and it aims at ameliorating the human condition. Because of the contingency of human knowledge and experience, pragmatism does not ascribe to a formal ideology, but rather claims that it represents common sense and a common good within the pluralism of human experience. The basic nonideological but moral tone of pragmatic thought can be more accurately described as maintaining the priority of the good over truth and as strongly favoring some form of individualism. To clarify the meaning of truth, Peirce says, “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”3 James adds that one knows whether one’s conception is true if the practical consequences are. Pragmatism removes truth from traditional correspondence and coherence theories and places it squarely in the radiating consequences of beliefs and actions. In so doing, pragmatic truth does not conform to the ordinary notion that truthful statements reflect the reality in the world, but rather pragmatically true statements become true if the expected consequences occur. These consequences may be good, bad, or neutral, and in this sense pragmatic truth is distinguishable from considerations of the good, and Peirce’s

2 Two essays that describe characteristics of pragmatism are John J. McDermott, “Pragmatic Sensibility: The Morality of Experience,” in New Directions in Ethics: The Challenge of Applied Ethics, eds. Joseph P. DeMarco and Richard M. Fox (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); and Henry Samuel Levinson, “Santayana and Making Claims on the Spiritual Truth about Matters of Fact,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, 12 (Fall 1994): 3. 3 Charles S.  Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear, 1878,” in Writings of Charles S.  Peirce:  A Chronological Edition, vol. 3 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 266.

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more rigorous and limited application of pragmatism appears not to give the good a place of priority over truth. However, pragmatism, particularly in James and Dewey, is deeply interested in structuring personal and social life for the best consequences. This is one of the reasons Santayana believed that James’s and Dewey’s philosophies were rooted in moralism rather than a thorough naturalism, since more traditional naturalists give little priority to individual experience let alone a central priority to individual human experience. Although it is a controversial claim, a cardinal trait of pragmatism—​and one that makes it a strong candidate for assessing the new genetics—​is its placement of the good as having priority over the ordinary sense of truth.4 What difference does it make if I know the way the world really is, but such knowledge does not lead to a better way of living for me and for my culture or species? By focusing on whether the radiations of knowledge and actions are good or not, the pragmatist also raises the difficult question of the role of the individual in making such determinations. Due to the advances in genetics and the neurosciences, understanding how individuals can choose or determine particular actions is more complex than anyone imagined even a decade ago. Here again, it appears that pragmatism and the new genetics march to different orders. Genetics looks for common traits among individuals. Each human has a similar chromosomal structure, and abnormalities are distinguishable from this common structure. Individual traits appear to be lost, and, if genetic explanations extend beyond mere background information to causal dependency (as is presently claimed for Huntington’s disease and Tay-​Sachs disease), individual decisions and environmental influences are eliminated as determinable characteristics in explanations of animal behavior. But pragmatism moves in quite a different direction. Individual experience, rooted in James’s radical empiricism, is at the forefront. The pragmatist recognizes many of the commonalities of human and animal experience, but there is an unshakeable belief that individual experience is fundamental and that it is best to allow individuals to make their own decisions. Dewey’s commitment to democracy and education was based on this belief. Rather than force a social policy with good consequences on society, Dewey worked to foster an educated public that

4 Michael Hodges, a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, made a similar point in response to a paper by David Dilworth, a professor of philosophy at suny Stony Brook, during the Santayana Society meeting held in conjunction with the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December 27, 1996.

242 Chapter 18 individually would make informed decisions about their lives and their participation in a democratic culture. The priority of the good over truth coupled with the centrality of individual decisions leads the pragmatist to strongly favor allowing individuals to make decisions about their own futures without coercive social factors. In light of popular accounts of the new genetics, pragmatism’s reliance on individual actions and decisions may seem both old fashioned and out of step with the new science. By placing the weight of the future on heritable traits, genetics appears to eliminate the pragmatic approach. Such reasoning, although popular, is in error, and, if it prospers, could lead to a future as ghastly as the disciplined and ordered horrors of the Nazi eugenics. An examination of the genetic explanations of complex human behaviors can be helpful here. The popular but largely false model of genetic explanation is a simple one: genotype causes phenotype. Within this model current traits and behavior are explained by the presence of a specific, identifiable genotype inherited from one’s parents. All heritable traits, including characteristics and actions, are thought to be causally determined by one’s genotype, with little, if any, influence from the environment or culture. Single-​trait phenotypes are models for this form of explanation. Dimples, the color of one’s eyes, earlobe attachment, widow’s peak hairline, hitchhiker’s thumb, and other traits are determined by a single gene whose presence determines whether these traits are exhibited (provided the environment fosters the life of the individual long enough for the heritable traits to appear). Single-​gene explanations are easy to understand, because the complexity of environment and culture appears to be excluded from them, and one can model simple cause-​and-​effect accounts that are intuitively clear: If a specific gene is carried on a chromosome, either somatic or germ line, then a particular trait will inevitably characterize the individual carrying that heritable gene. As we shall see, multifactorial traits are not as intuitively clear nor as easily couched in simple cause-​and-​effect language. If the new genetics can characterize complex human behaviors (aggression, sexual orientation, intelligence, sociability, and so on) by reference to single genes, then the popular genotype-​phenotype explanation will be the simplest key to understanding, predicting, and controlling these behaviors. And certain phenotypes appear to follow this formula, particularly Huntington’s disease (Tay-​Sachs disease and trisomy 18 are other candidates).5 5 Trisomy is a condition in which one chromosome is present in three copies, whereas all the chromosomes are diploid. Trisomy 18 (Edward’s syndrome) is a condition in which a child has three copies of chromosome 18. Infants are small at birth, grow very slowly, and are

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An overlong cag repeat near the tip of chromosome 4 will inevitably lead to Huntington’s disease, an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder with symptoms of worsening gait, uncontrollable movement, cognitive decline, and personality changes leading to insanity. It usually occurs between thirty and fifty years of age, and an individual with the disease normally dies within ten to fifteen years after its onset. If an individual has the cag codon repeats, then regardless of the person’s environment, family, or culture, that individual appears destined to a very difficult ending of life. No doubt this accounts for the high rate of suicide among people with Huntington’s disease. If this were the full story and if it served as the model for other complex human behaviors, the role of genetic explanation would be one of causal determinacy with little or no role for environmental influences or individual choices. But it is not the full story. At present, the march of Huntington’s disease in an individual’s life cannot be altered. Everyone with the genotype will have the phenotype. The onset of the disease and its length vary, and for a while some thought these characteristics might be environmentally influenced, but recent research suggests that the number of cag repeats may be an indicator of these factors. A few years ago pku (phenylketonuria) was viewed in much the same way. This is a genetic disease that impedes children’s ability to metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine and leads to severe retardation. Today, as a result of special diets, children with pku develop normally. By altering the children’s dietary environment, the oversupply of phenylalanine and the lack of tyrosine can be prevented, and the tragic alteration of the children’s cognitive capacities can be avoided. One can hope the same will be true of Huntington’s disease and other devastating maladies that now appear inevitable. The lesson here is that a simple model of causal determinacy between genotype and phenotype is easy to understand and may appear to be the best we can do given our current knowledge. But there is always the possibility that by separating the genetic anomaly from its phenotype we can discover environmental influences that will alter the onset, length, and severity of the malady. From a pragmatic perspective, there may be far better consequences if we continue to look for environmental influences that shape a phenotype even if we have found a single genetic characteristic that sets it in motion. However, the likelihood of finding single genetic traits that determine most complex mentally retarded. Heart malformations are almost always present, and the average survival time is two to four months. Trisomy 18 has a frequency of one in 11,000 live births. Trisomy 13 is also lethal, with half of all affected individuals dying in the first month. Trisomy 21 is Down’s syndrome.

244 Chapter 18 human behaviors appears unlikely. Even for multifactorial characteristics such as physical height, it appears that there is both a multifaceted genetic base and complex environmental influences. Therefore, the pragmatic insight into the complexity and contingency of human life warns against looking for any overly simplistic or single-​chain type of determinism. The pragmatic insight also calls attention to the human tragedies that have resulted from simplistic reasoning, or, as Dewey might have put it, from not acting intelligently. Santayana’s oft-​repeated epigram merits one more echo:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”6 Surely many of the historic tragedies of eugenics occurred because of a simplistic view that if we control the makeup of parents, we will control the production of children with positive attributes. The new eugenics, far more scientifically based than Nazi eugenics, tempts one to believe one can control the complex characteristics of future generations by simply controlling genotypes. This cause-​and-​effect approach not only is misleading, but also, based on current evidence, is wrong. Even if the current evidence did not fully support the conclusion, the pragmatist might well argue that better consequences will come if we continue to pursue not only the Human Genome Project, but also the environmentally and culturally important features of human life. A fuller, more humane, and more creative approach to understanding human behavior is more likely to result than if we make individual and social decisions based on a simplistic model that assumes the phenotype is rigidly determined by the genotype. One may wonder what is gained by this pragmatic insight other than the recognition of the complexity of scientific explanations (not an unimportant point). After all, the multifactorial accounts of climatology provide reliable bases for making weather predictions, but no one supposes that the weather is determined by anything other than natural causes; it is not free or indeterminate merely because our predictions are based on probabilities. Winds or clouds have no choice in the matter. Are humans any different? Even if we knew all the genetic and environmental factors in human behavior, we still might be able to predict only with a certain probability what the resulting phenotypes would be, but that would not provide credence for the claim that social policies should be based on individual decisions. Indeed, it might call for structuring individual decisions to match social goals, much as in the form imagined by Plato in his Republic or in a more rigidly and scientifically organized way than envisioned by early eugenics movements in the United 6 George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905), 284.

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States, England, and Europe. In such structures individual decisions would not be the determinants of social policies, but the reverse would hold, and some may argue that the new eugenics supports such an ordering. Why should one hold to the pragmatic principle that individual human experience should be the principal basis for choices and social policies? This is no simple question, and it cannot be answered adequately in a short chapter. However, the outlines of a pragmatic response are clear. First, one may recall James’s arguments that it is better to believe in free will than not, even if one cannot prove it. I will not recount his argument, but will simply note that the belief in freedom of the will is more likely to result in persons taking responsibility for their actions. If the evidence for and against free choice is not decisive, believing in free will is the better option leading to better results. Second, the new genetics brings a twist to the question of individual freedom that needs to be sorted out and also promises considerable advances in understanding human action. It is a double twist that places greater weight on human responsibility than on human freedom and highlights the question of how responsible human beings are fostered by society. Earlier these issues had a different form. Responsibility was viewed as resulting from free will, a will not determined by antecedent conditions. But, as we learn more about the causes of complex human actions, there appear to be few alternatives but to consider all actions as natural results of forces within us, our environment, and our culture. Previously many of the questions concerning the individual and society were approached from the metaphysical certainty that individuals formed societies, and the principal problem was to explain why they did so. Within the new genetics and the evolutionary studies of human behavior, individuals with heritable traits are seen as being generated within a society and an environment, and the difficult question is why only some individuals are responsible persons in their environment and their culture. That is, previously the fundamental question seemed to be why individuals created societies, and now the fundamental question is how individuals are created within societies. Each of these issues has a long intellectual history. In terms of freedom, many scholars have noted that the question is not whether individual actions are caused, but what is their cause. Surely persons are causal forces in the world, and the extent to which one’s own nature causes actions will play a significant role in determining whether an action is considered free or not. However, in an odd sort of way, even if the notion of freedom is reconsidered or some notion of it abandoned as no longer tenable, this will not remove our responsibility for actions. If I know that rearing children in a hostile and harsh environment is likely to have detrimental effects, that knowledge makes

246 Chapter 18 me more responsible for raising children in a certain way than if I did not have the knowledge. If I know that many complex human actions are shaped by our genotypes in concert with the environment, that knowledge places a serious weight of responsibility on my shoulders for shaping genotype, environment, and culture so that humans flourish. This is a responsibility that other generations did not have, at least not in the sense that we do, because we now have strong evidence for this belief. Hence, if a notion of freedom that relied heavily on some mysterious, non-​natural cause is eventually abandoned, that may only increase our responsibility for our actions, particularly if individuals are viewed as causal forces bringing about changes within our environment and our culture. And we may be helped in this matter by other advances in understanding human development in the areas of biochemistry, evolutionary studies, and the social sciences. Ironically and dramatically, the genetic focus on human commonality highlights the issue of how responsible individuals are cultivated. There is no question that individuals come from societies, coming into the world with heritable traits waiting to shape their lives and environment, and also waiting to be shaped by the environment. The biological and societal commonality of humans—​of all living cells, for that matter—​is the given. But why do some individuals become responsible and productive persons, whereas others do not? That may prove to be the driving question for the next level of understanding human development, and the pragmatic principle of common sense and the common good may well be our best guide. In summary, pragmatism advises us (1) to not overlook the complexity of the interplay between genotype, environment, and culture, (2) to pursue not only the genetic base for complex human actions, but also the environmental and cultural forces, (3) to focus on the responsibility of ameliorating the human condition by intelligently utilizing scientific and cultural knowledge, and (4) to redirect current research to understanding the development of responsible individuals within the biological and social commonalities. 3

Pragmatism and Parents

Perhaps the most difficult issues raised by the new genetics are those facing parents. If our knowledge of genotypes linked to heritable traits is increasing significantly, how should parents use that information? The selective process of finding a compatible mate previously seemed to be a social function largely bound by one’s economic and social status, loosely described in external

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characteristics: personality, beauty and charm, apparent initiative and intelligence, and so on. But the slightest piece of cellular material or bodily fluid can provide a far more detailed account of heritable traits and some assessment of possible futures for one’s children as well as oneself. In the near future, mail-​in tests or shopping-​mall stores named Genes R Us will not have to exist for people with the economic means to gain far more information about their own genotype than any previous generation had. That information is likely to come with new technologies that will help shape the future lives of children—​and the future lives of each succeeding generation. Is this “playing God”? Yes, perhaps, but primarily it is taking the role of parenting seriously. If the means for determining many aspects of the future lives of one’s children are available, do parents not have the obligation, within reason, to use those means and the results wisely? If I know I have a particular heritable trait that may dramatically harm or enhance the lives of my children, that knowledge carries a responsibility. But what am I  to do with the responsibility? Rather than enunciating a specific set of parental principles, the pragmatist normally resorts to accounts of the complexity and contingency of human knowledge, of the interplay between nature, culture, and environment that make it difficult, even impossible, to draw rigid guidelines or principles for parents to follow. Hence, on the pragmatic account one should minimize overreaching social policies that force parents and medical institutions into ironclad approaches, thereby leaving the door open for individual decisions and creative alternatives. If doing so leads to some results that are less than desirable, that is to be expected, but the overall results should be better. In order for parents to make the best decisions, they need information and an understanding of that information. The pragmatist places great importance on the free flow of information, on education that equips individuals for intelligent action, and on the general belief that all individuals will seek the good of their children. For the pragmatist rationality is rooted in the desire to avoid harm, particularly harm to those closest and dearest to one. A significant corollary to this form of rationality is that it is embodied. It is not an abstract mental construction, but it is a rationality embodied in the physiology of the individual and in the relations of that individual with the environment, society, and culture. Pragmatists realize that even if we have the proper information and understanding, the immense difficulties of making these decisions will not be lessened. Ironically, they will be greater. Certain traits will no longer result from random occurrences or be the products of uncaring fate; in the new

248 Chapter 18 genetics more and more characteristics will be subject to parental choices and parental care. Genetic counselors know the difficult decisions parents make, particularly when their decisions are based on partial knowledge of their own heritable traits and on partial understanding of the probabilities that these traits will be passed to future generations. Guilt, concern, and control are all issues, but fragmentary scientific knowledge coupled with the difficulty of understanding and acting on complex mathematical probabilities weakens the foundation of all such decisions. In the past we have been surprised when “good” parents have sometimes had “bad” children or when a genetic malady suddenly appeared in a family with no known historical pedigree for it. Now parents may have more responsibility for knowing their own heritable traits and for doing what they can not to harm their children’s futures and, if possible, to enhance them. Obviously there will be many difficulties with parents’ having these responsibilities—​and not merely the difficulties of having to make such important decisions. Think of the expectations that will be placed on a child if the parents have taken all precautions to raise a bright, personable, productive individual. But what if the child does not meet these expectations? Already parents sometimes have very high expectations of their children based on what may soon appear to be surface evidence. Sending children to the best schools with expectations of high achievement does not always work out, and parents and children experience not only disappointment because of these pressures, but also serious harm that can last a lifetime. One can assume that the potential for harm will increase as we take more responsibility for the traits and behavior patterns of our children. If children’s personalities and behavioral traits could truly be engineered, imagine what remarkable expectations we would have of our future generations. However, one must also consider the alternative of ignoring the opportunities and responsibilities of the new genetics. If we do so, are the results likely to be better or less problematic? The answer is no. In summation, pragmatism suggests that parents (1) should not be bound by ideological approaches to parenting or to moral decisions, (2) should get genetic information and wisely use it in shaping their lives and that of their children, and (3) should accept responsibility not only for wisely using the new genetics, but also for shaping our society and environment so that future generations may flourish. Rigid ideological approaches to human reproduction and the development of responsible individuals are not likely to match the difficulty or complexity of the actual circumstances of human life. Embodied within each of us are habits and a heritage that have been tested since the arrival of the human species.

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Each newborn child is the leading edge of generations of ancestors, possessing some heritable traits from his or her lineage and some newly recombined chromosomal formations. Each child develops, grows, and dies, leaving his or her own legacy, usually including the transmission of genotypes to future generations. Narrow and doctrinaire approaches to child rearing and morality are unlikely to match the complexity and creativity of this long-​standing natural process. Choices concerning the new genetics are unlikely to be altogether clear cut, and some parents will be more adventurous, while others will take a more cautious path. The likelihood that either approach will be entirely correct is small. Hence, pragmatism suggests that parents learn as much as they can about the influences on themselves and on their children and make the best decision possible in the context of that complexity. Gathering information will not be enough; one also needs to be able to understand the information, interpret it, and use it. Education will play the most obvious role by enabling individuals to make wise decisions based on the evidence available. Even if much of the evidence is incomplete, based on mathematical probabilities, and difficult to decipher because of medical and scientific jargon, parental responsibility will not be lessened, but rather will be increased simply because greater knowledge carries greater responsibility. Coupled with the responsibility to understanding the important implications of the new genetics will be the obligation to shape and structure society and the environment so that future generations can flourish. Genetic information may be of basic help in this endeavor, but an appreciation of the way human life is structured by social, cultural, and environmental influences will be equally important. 4

Pragmatism and Social Policy

Just as no specific principles for parents are entailed by the pragmatist approach, it provides no ironclad guidelines for social policy. Although the pragmatist focus is on educating individuals for intelligent action, that clearly is not enough. Socially we raise our children in a caring, trusting environment, even teaching them myths such as that of a white-​bearded jolly gentleman who brings presents to good children at the winter solstice. But part of becoming an adult is to understand that the world is not entirely populated by people who have a loving interest in children’s well-​being. There are people who have little capacity for caring and who, worse yet, enjoy bringing pain to others, even their own children. Some of these individuals

250 Chapter 18 are locked up, and some are not. Furthermore, there are individuals whose cognitive capacities lessen their responsibilities. There are also groups of people—​hate groups, cults, and sects—​with such narrow interests that the good of those beyond their interests is not to be calculated. Fanaticism of all kinds narrows the perspective of caring to a small, mean domain. In addition, not all family structures are caring and supportive of children. Today the myth of the nuclear family is widespread, particularly in the United States, but there is substantial evidence that many families are quite harmful to the future lives of their children. Hence, social limits must be placed on individual decisions, because not all individual decisions are equal. But what those limits should be is not easy to determine, particularly regarding the new genetics. The United States continues to set severe limits and prohibitions on embryo and fetal research. Should those limitations be expanded and applied to genetic research? Should parents have the right to full knowledge of their own genotype and that of their children? Should there be limits on the actions parents can take based on such knowledge? Must medical institutions provide not only genetic information, but also the services requested by parents? One does not have to recall the difficulties of the abortion issue to imagine the difficulties likely to develop with the new technologies and information that will be available following the completion of the Human Genome Project.7 The patenting of dna products already is raising remarkably difficult social issues concerning business interest in agricultural life, and one can imagine what may lie ahead regarding human life. Pragmatism has no ready solutions to these issues and counsels against following anyone who does. Education, care in fostering the development of our children, and securing a safe environment and a nurturing society are all goals of pragmatism. A principal pragmatic tenet is that social decisions should be made by those who will be most affected by such decisions; that is, individuals should decide for themselves, and parents should be permitted the greatest latitude possible to make important decisions about the future lives of their children while still maintaining a stable society and healthy environment.8

7 Although the principal focus of this chapter is on human genetics, major changes in agricultural production are highly likely due to the new technologies of genetics, and these new production alternatives will raise similar questions, though not as close to home, as those related to the production and raising of human children. 8 There are significant legal and moral issues involved in parent-​child relations. Many hospitals are now adopting child assent procedures to ensure that children, not only parents, have a voice in medical treatment, and one anticipates that similar procedures may be adopted

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The Limitations of Pragmatism

Briefly and without the benefit of a lengthy treatise, I have argued that pragmatism provides some of the best criteria for understanding genetic explanations of human traits and behavior, for aiding parents in making decisions about the future lives of their children, and for guiding social policies. However, although pragmatism may be our best hope, it has serious limitations. One obvious limitation is the lack of specificity of its recommendations; this is a genuine weakness if one is looking for absolutes or guidelines not subject to wear and tear. Normally the pragmatist will argue that specificity will be supplied by the circumstances. Besides, in this case we are anticipating new circumstances and therefore cannot provide the particulars as yet. Genetic counselors, researchers on the Human Genome Project, hospital ethics committees, and parents are presently making specific decisions regarding particular issues, and as these become larger societal issues, we are likely to find governmental, educational, medical, and other societal institutions developing specific guidelines, much as was done at the beginning of the genome project. Although the lack of specificity may be a weakness of the pragmatist’s approach to the new issues that are arising, the pragmatist also sees it as a strength that will permit adaptability and creativity. But there is another limitation that may be more serious. Pragmatism may be entirely wrong. By emphasizing the priority of the good over truth, pragmatism opens the door to fictions that bring good results until confronted by the reality of the natural world, a world that has no central focus or concern for human experience. One is reminded of the account—​by Nietzsche, I believe—​of the contented cows that spend their lives placidly in a pasture; each day food and shelter are provided as needed, until the day comes when the cows are taken to the slaughterhouse. The cows did not know of the undercurrents in the social and economic structures that shaped their lives. For several millennia we humans were in the same boat, realizing only recently that the most basic threats to human existence are not social structures and wars, but microorganisms that undermine the very basis of human life through disease and death. Now we are learning more about the genetic base of our lives, but this is a small piece of knowledge in an ocean of living beings. Human experience seems a slight matter in the remarkable natural history of the development of the living universe and of the process that structures

in areas of genetic counseling when the future of a child, particularly age fourteen or over, is involved.

252 Chapter 18 genetic development. Perhaps, like the cows, we know little of an impending, uncaring, natural evolution or doom that awaits us. We may be in complete error if we assume we have control over our fate in any fundamental way, and particularly if we assume that human intelligence is equal to any dilemma, natural or social, that may confront our species. Even so, the pragmatist argues that since such events are beyond our control and current experience, we need not be concerned. If we are doomed to a microorganic cataclysm, it would be better to live as if we were not, as if our actions and choices mattered, as if the future were in our hands. This is certainly correct. But one may hope that if one enlarges the pragmatic perspective by playing down the centrality of human experience and individualism, both humility and joy will be the resulting human trait. And these two traits, which are not common characteristics of pragmatism, could serve as a corrective to the task-​oriented and sometimes joyless pragmatic accounts of the human condition. The do-​good and constant-​improvement orientation of pragmatism seem to portray one unending task after another as the human dilemma, leaving little room for play, enjoyment, and delight in the moment, art, or pleasure. The philosophy of Santayana, more than any of the classical American thinkers, seems the best corrective to a pragmatism that was shaped by the task-​ oriented capitalism of the past two centuries. He thought that there are many tasks at hand, and some things are genuinely in our control, but one principal goal of life is not an endless succession of activities and moral tasks; it is to celebrate living and to enjoy our children. All our hopes of shaping the future may be an illusion, but the aesthetic delight of being alive is real. It is one of the most humbling and joyful experiences of our species, whether we understand it or not. In fact, in terms of the quality of life, experiencing the joy of life is more important than understanding it (to paraphrase Santayana’s thoughts on the nature of beauty). One hopes the new genetics provides us with a better understanding of aesthetic delight in our lives and that of future generations. If it does not, so much the worse for the new genetics and for pragmatism.

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Genotypes, Phenotypes, and Complex Human Behavior Including Scholarly Editing For quite some time I have been puzzled by the role of genetics in explaining both human characteristics and behavior.1 This curiosity led to several odd occupations for a philosopher/​editor. With a biochemist, I team-​teach an honors course in genetics, and recently I became a faculty member and administrator in a college of medicine as well as a professor of pediatrics in a hospital-​clinic research institution. These are not positions usually open to editors or philosophers, and one might wonder how they came about. Intellectually, George Santayana’s naturalism is the springboard for my interest. Although he maintains that all human behavior may be explained adequately through the sciences, Santayana is not a reductive naturalist. Aesthetic and imaginative qualities make life worthwhile, and these always will be missing from any consistent scientific account of our behavior. Our lives are determined by heritable traits, environment, and culture, but this is no reason for despair or drab resignation. Santayana’s point is that knowledge of the determinant structures of human life should lead us to cherish the creative, artistic, and spiritual side of human life. His is a festive outlook that accepts the determinant status of all life. In some ways, approaches to scholarly editing parallel Santayana’s perspective. In preparing editions (historical, literary, scientific, and philosophical), we attempt to account for each determinant aspect of the edition, basing editorial decisions on the best available evidence and clear argument. As in explanations of human conduct, we can never do so with satisfying completeness even if the task is theoretically possible. At least two reasons account for this incompleteness. First, the uncertainty of all human knowledge, particularly in 1 Being a philosopher, I am delighted to leave ade with a conundrum. This address was delivered with the assistance of a computer presentation which cannot be a part of the published format of Documentary Editing. As a result, one may ask which was my presidential address: the one I gave in Boston or the published form? This puzzle is a part of every address given orally since much is omitted in any published form: inflection, gestures, guttural sounds, laughter, smiles, frowns, etc. The computer format only highlights these omissions because what is projected from the computer is largely material that could appear in published formats, but would cause the text to be considerably longer and to have a considerably different appearance and design.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_023

254 Chapter 19 complex structures, makes it difficult to claim definitive results. And second, aesthetic qualities are rarely, if ever, captured in empirical explanations. Imagine we could find a text in which every decision we make would be adequately justified. Even then, the delight of our work as editors would be missing. The values of the editions, of the authors and editors, and of our scholarship would not be parts of even complete explanations of our texts. They may be seen as outgrowths of the process or as basic structures guiding our efforts, but either way, the delight of editorial discoveries, of resolving puzzles and problems, of collaborative efforts and sudden understandings, are missing in any theoretically complete genetic text, just as they are missing in any complete genetic explanation of human behavior. Expanding on the parallels between human genetics and genetic texts, in this article I turn first to the simple notion that genotype determines phenotype and explore possible parallels in scholarly editing. Then I address complex human behaviors, including editing, and their possible genetic explanations. Throughout I make two immoderate claims: (1) editing is the basis of all life and (2) even if we could give a full explanation of scholarly editing, we would miss much of the delight of what we do. Finally, I turn to celebrate the work of the Santayana Edition and members of the Association for Documentary Editing. 1

Editing: The Basis of Life

For members of the ade, editing is the basis of our professional life, but it is more. It is the basis of all life. Although genetics is a relatively new science, particularly to the medical school curriculum, one may assume that most educated persons are now familiar with the double helix of dna and with the notion of cell replication. In cell replication, an essential feature of human life, we find a molecular editor that is responsible for reproducing a daughter duplicate of a mother cell. If this replication is not done with considerable accuracy, then life will not continue. Hence as the mother cell splits its double helix, a molecular editor makes certain that each strand is joined with a complementary strand of dna that replicates the mother cell. The geneticists refer to dna polymerase as the molecular editor; a less scientific but more accurate description is that of a biological scholarly editor. A molecule of dna polymerase edits the duplication of every cell, assuring accuracy and making critical corrections when mistakes are made. This is an enormous task. There are about 60 trillion cells in the human body. A normal human cell contains between 50,000 and 100,000 genes made of 3 billion

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nucleotide pairs, and it takes about seven hours to make a copy of one human cell. It is equivalent to reading a thousand five-​hundred-​page books in which each letter represents one nucleotide in a cell.2 dna replication makes a mistake in about one out of every 10,000 nucleotides added to build a new strand of the double helix. The proofreading ability of dna polymerase reduces the actual error rate to 1 in 10 million. But even such a high accuracy rate would not assure the continuance of life. Finally, repair genes cut the error rate to 1 in a billion nucleotides. Not bad for any scholarly editor. Furthermore, it is important to emphasize the dna polymerase molecule does not appear to function in any rote, mechanical fashion, but rather makes critical judgments about the editing process as replication proceeds. Using some imagination, one may think of this cellular editorial process as similar to genetic textual theory. Genetic editions are defined as “textual editions that try to offer the reader access to more than one level of textual creation within a single page.”3 Whether the approach is that of copy-​text, synoptic, synthetic, collaborative, or some other editorial process, the basic idea is to provide the genetic evolution of the text in question. In cell replication, the original dna structure of the cell may be thought of as the copy-​text. dna polymerase and repair genes work to assure an accurate replication of the cell, but intervening factors cause changes in the nucleotides’ arrangement. When this happens, either our little molecular editor removes errors, inserting the proper complementary nucleotide, or it appears to make “decisions” about the process when evidence seems lacking—​not unlike a gifted scholarly editor. This process of one cell becoming two is modeled in textual scholarship by the copy-​text theory. In the creation of new life, when two cells become one, the process is much more like synthetic editions, or, more sexually suggestive, collaborative editions. Genetic editions enable us and others to understand how texts evolved through their past and to their present forms. The goal of the Human Genome Project is similar: an effort to understand how humans developed their present characteristics. Within fifteen years the Human Genome Project (hgp) will be complete, accomplishing a full mapping and sequencing of the human genome that will inform and enhance our understanding of human nature and behavior. Unlike the hgp, there is little hope of completing genetic texts of all published works, let alone the main ones. The impossibility of this task is due 2 Boyce Rensberger, Life Itself: Exploring the Realm of the Living Cell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 127. 3 For a full discussion of genetic editions, see c­ hapter 6 of the new A Guide to Documentary Editing by Mary-​Jo Kline, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

256 Chapter 19 to the complexity of each text and the great dissimilarities of texts. The human genome represents the commonality of each human where our dna structure is greatly similar and where the differences are determinable. Furthermore, society places far greater emphasis on determining the human genome than on genetic texts because of the obvious benefits (and dangers) of such knowledge to present and future generations. Although the objects of research are different, geneticists and textual scholars share a common task: carefully laying out, describing, and analyzing heritable traits. As a result, there is much in common between the research methods of these two seemingly disparate disciplines, and this article will adumbrate some of these commonalities. 2

Simplicity: Genotype Causes Phenotype

If one had full knowledge of the evolution of a text and if that process were clear and straightforward, the editorial process would be simple. One might well present an original text which should be replicated in each evolutionary stage, unless there were authorial revisions. This linear methodology parallels both cell replication and the copy-​text theory. If the holograph has gone through changes that are clearly defined, the critical edition text may be seen as the best available replication of a work as intended by the author. However, with complex texts involving many social radiations of influence, it is more difficult to understand the process, let alone produce a genetic text that accurately describes the full evolution of the text. Much the same is true with the role of genetics in explaining human behavior. Some of our characteristics are expressions of single genes: hitchhiker’s thumb, widow’s peak, attached or unattached earlobes, and dimples are examples. If you have the genotype, you will have the phenotype regardless of your culture and environment—​unless you do something drastic like amputate your thumb or earlobes. With more complex human behavior, the circumstances are more difficult, although there are some powerful genetic explanations of some complex human behavior, just as there are rich copy-​text explanations of complex texts. In textual scholarship, there are many complex editions that have used copytext theory, including literary and historical texts modeled after the Greg-​Bowers-​Tanselle approach, as well as several philosophical editions (James and Santayana). Huntington’s disease is a good example of a complex behavior explained by a genetic abnormality. An overlong cag repeat near the tip of chromosome 4 will inevitably lead to Huntington’s disease, an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder with symptoms of worsening gait, uncontrollable

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movement, cognitive decline, and personality changes leading to insanity. Normally there are 10–​29 repeats, but those with hd have more than 40, and recent research suggests that the number of repeats correlates with the time of onset and the length of the disease. At present, if you have the high number of repeats, you will have hd. Genotype causes phenotype. The disease usually appears when the individual is between thirty and fifty years of age, and death normally occurs within ten to fifteen years after the onset of the disease. If an individual has the cag codon repeats, then regardless of the person’s environment, family, or culture, that individual appears destined to a very difficult ending of life. No doubt this accounts for the high rate of suicide among people with hd. And we do not have any means of editing out the repeats or altering their effect, as yet.4 3

Complexity: Social and Environmental Influences

Although there are examples of complex human behavior that are adequately explained through genetics, there are others that make one doubt the fullness of genetic explanations. Is it likely we would ever discover the genetic base for becoming a scholarly editor, accepting an office in ade, or winning the Texas lottery? These complex human behaviors seem too rooted and shaped by environment and culture to be explained by any simple model of genotype causing phenotype. Indeed, perhaps the great majority of human behaviors lie beyond any full genetic explanation even if all human actions have a genetic base. As textual scholars, we should be among the first to recognize that a simple reductive approach to complex behaviors, including editing, is likely to fail. Most of us have appointments in universities or research institutions, and if one looked at the history of those institutions it is unlikely one could project their current status based on their condition at the turn of the last century. Texas A&M University, for example, is now ranked fifth in externally funded support among the major research institutions, fourth in endowment, and first in full-​time undergraduate enrollment, but one hardly could have predicted this from the small, all-​male, military institution of the first half of this century. Individuals are much the same. Santayana was born in 1863 in Madrid, and he spent roughly six years of his life in a small, parochial Spanish city, Ávila. From this rather modest and narrow background, it would not have been possible to predict that he would appear on the cover of Time (3 February 1936). Or that 4 Twin studies also provide evidence that many of our behavior traits seem genetically based.

258 Chapter 19 his novel and autobiography both would be best-​selling books in the United States. As textual scholars, we also know the rise and fall of “definitive editions.” In this classic example of attempting to reduce all editorial procedures to a copy-​text format, we found that the social radiations affecting many texts had great import in determining the final state of our texts. The parallel between producing genetic texts and the hgp, I hope, is clear. Single-​gene explanations of human behavior function much like the copy-​text theory of textual scholarship, and the task of the editor in replicating the authorial text is much like that of the dna polymerase in replicating a cell. However, some complex texts and complex behaviors may be difficult to reduce to simple explanations when social and environmental influences are clear determinants in their present status. Hence, even when the hgp is complete, there will be much left to do. Complex behaviors (Tourette syndrome, sexuality, novelty seeking, neuroticism, religiosity, fear, etc.) will need to be correlated with their genetic bases, and the extent of genetic influence will have to be calculated beyond the mere linkage studies now available—​much like the efforts to indicate the wide-​ranging social impacts on historical, literary, philosophical, and scientific texts. This is not to deny the great importance of the new genetics for human society. Medical practice will be reshaped as we map, sequence, and correlate our genome with defects and diseases. Parenting will involve more responsibility for the selection of children’s traits, as it already does for in vitro fertilization, and in the future these options will be considerably greater than they are now. Forensic science will move forward in developing more readily available “genetic fingerprints” for each individual that have wide-​ranging military, industrial, and legal uses. And social institutions, including education, may receive considerable benefit by simply knowing more about the determinant structures of our lives and education, thereby being able to structure learning and its environment in a more productive manner. A negative side of genetics and textual scholarship is the effort to provide favored approaches that exclude, without justification, other perspectives. In textual theory, one could view the early ceaa approach as a part of this negative side, while appraising the current open-​textured view of the mla Committee on Scholarly Editions as representing a perspective more open to evidence. In genetics this exclusionary role has a far more devastating history and should not be dismissed. The Nazi regime is not so far past nor so far removed to merit dismissal. Beginning with economic accountability, borrowed largely from the United States, Nazi Germany produced and published a cost-​accounting approach for maintaining “genetically defective” individuals in their society. These costs were projected as being borne on the shoulders of the productive and genetically normal citizens. We know, or should know, the horrors of the

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Holocaust, Germany’s misconstrual of genetic information that supported one culture over all others. We may not be as familiar with the American efforts in the same direction: sterilizations of “mentally defective” individuals at the turn of the last century, severe limits on immigrants from regions and continents considered less genetically desirable, and state fairs giving prizes for the best genetically endowed men and women (all Caucasian, of course). With the Holocaust as our backdrop, we should recognize that greater knowledge of the human genome increases our responsibility for heritable traits of future generations. We will be able to eliminate or ameliorate many heritable diseases, but we should be mindful of Santayana’s account of a fanatic: a person who redoubles his efforts having lost sight of his goal. Are there lessons for textual scholarship to be drawn from the tragic history of eugenics? Obviously, textual tyranny, even in its worst forms, does not have the same horror or human devastation as genetic tyranny. But one can ask in a softer manner what are the results of textual tyranny where evidence is ruled out simply because it does not fit a favored editorial theory. Division, hostility, conflicts among colleagues, and loss of scholarship and funding seem to result. Partisan heat over false distinctions leads to flawed judgments and textual products. As a result, we as an association need to keep our aim on attaining textual projects of the highest quality and work together to increase the current level of scholarship, support, and intellectual advancement. This is not a simple task. Many determinant features impede our working together: decreasing government and university support for editorial projects coupled with the increased difficulties of maintaining and supporting professional staffs. However, unless we continue to work in a concerted fashion, we will experience fewer funds and less cohesion, and, perhaps more significantly, we will miss the delight of cooperative endeavors. 4

Santayana’s Festive Naturalism

The enchantment of cooperative endeavors is illustrated by work on the many editions represented in ade, each rooted in the values of each project. The Santayana Edition is grounded in Santayana’s philosophical contributions. Focusing on our fated predicament while delighting in life is one of Santayana’s overlooked perspectives. Indeed, many of his outlooks were far ahead of his time: he was a nonreductive naturalist before naturalism grew popular. Accepting one’s fated predicament (genetic, cultural, environmental) leads to a form of disinterestedness that is imaginative and speculative. Santayana often refers to this perspective as that of a traveler on holiday. The traveler

260 Chapter 19 enjoys cultures without being bound by them, delights in the festivities but does not believe in the local myths. In short, one understands and sympathizes with one’s heritage, and that of others, while recognizing that heritable traits are best viewed imaginatively. Science can work at ferreting out the causal accounts of living, but you and I may delight in life if our heritage and environment permit. Spirit is Santayana’s term for consciousness or awareness that is generated when the physical elements of the world unknowingly attain harmony. Spirit is “precisely the voice of order in nature, the music, as full of light as of motion, of joy as of peace, that comes with an even partial and momentary perfection in some vital rhythm.” Such harmony is temporary, and the disorganized natural forces permit spirit to arise “only spasmodically, to suffer and to fail. For just as the birth of spirit is joyous, because some nascent harmony evokes it, so the rending or smothering of that harmony, if not sudden, imposes useless struggles and suffering.”5 The insecure equilibrium of the natural world must be recognized and accepted before one can celebrate the birth of reason and spirit in the natural world. Such a celebration leads to the delight of imagination and artistry, and to the acceptance of the insecure circumstances of one’s liberation. The instability of the physical world makes the celebration all the more significant, makes one’s mental remove from fate all the more vital and rich. The renewed interest in Santayana is perhaps understandable given our fin de siècle mood. Even his most often quoted epigram calls attention to the need for understanding our history: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Reexamination of one’s heritage and of one’s prospects for the future are traditional marks of significant cultural turning points, and one small reason for hope in our future is that more scholars are turning to an examination of Santayana’s thought. Santayana’s clear sense of being European provides a unique appraisal of American character and thought, one that now we are forced to face with the growth and development of a united Europe. His concern about American youthfulness and energy not being wise enough to carry future generations forward into the complexity of relationships with other cultures is a concern that is now inescapable. His Hispanic heritage, coupled with his feeling of being an outsider in America, captures much of the apprehension and concern that is unavoidable as we begin to find our milieu becoming factionalized and fragmented. And his sense of the complexity and joy of life are clearly features that we can learn from as we move forward into the next millennium. There is much to learn from a study of Santayana. 5 George Santayana, The Birth of Reason and Other Essays, ed. Daniel Cory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 53.

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One of the lessons of Santayana is to celebrate when you can, and this presidential address is one such occasion. The principal joy of my professional career is the Santayana Edition and its diligent and caring staff: Kris Frost, associate editor; Brenda Bridges, assistant editor; Donna Hanna-​Calvert, former associate editor; many research assistants, librarians, archivists, and countless more associated with publishing houses, academic departments, and other groups. This past year has been an intense year for ade because of the intrigue of federal funding and of nhprc policy. Throughout it all, I have enjoyed the support and energy of the ade council: Cullom Davis, Chuck Hobson, Sharon Stevens, Phil Chase, Tom Mason, Judith James, Beverly Palmer, and Diana Hadley. The work of Charlene Bickford, chair of the Federal Policy Committee, has been outstanding along with that of Leslie Rowland. Sixty-​seven people served on ade committees. And, of course, I tip my hat to Celeste Walker, who chaired the Local Arrangements Committee that made this such a successful meeting.

­c hapter 20

Teaching Ethical Issues in Genetics

Assessment of the Development of Moral Reasoning Skill

This project assessed the influence on moral reasoning skills of teaching undergraduate health professions-​bound students a course specifically designed to address ethical issues in genetics.1 The Defining Issues Test (dit) was used to assess moral reasoning skills. The hypothesis was that there would be an increase in moral reasoning skills following exposure to the course. Students were pre-​tested, taught the course, and post-​tested at the end of the semester. The mean dit scores were 47.1 (pre-​test) and 55.9 (post-​test) representing a significant (p≤0.0027) increase in moral reasoning skills. There was no significant difference between the moral reasoning score of males and females on either the pre-​test or post-​test. This study provides evidence that the teaching of ethics in genetics can be rigorously measured and tested and that it can have a significant positive influence on the moral reasoning skills of students. 1

Introduction

With the explosion of new genetic technologies that permit dramatically new interventions in the practice of medicine, there have been increased concerns about the emergence of moral and ethical issues in genetics.2 These concerns have been expressed in academia, in politics, and by the public at large. The implementation of the Human Genome Project has emphasized these concerns by devoting a portion of its budget to exploring the social, legal, and ethical issues raised by the project. These concerns include issues of privacy, employment screening, implications for insurance, eugenics, research ethics, and explanations of human behavior as well as the prediction of future health status. It is essential that the public become better informed and that attention

1 This essay was co-​written with Elizabeth M. Ellison, Donnie J. Self, and James R. Wild. 2 See the following: Patricia A. Baird, “Identifying People’s Genes: Ethical Aspects of DNA Sampling in Populations,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1995, no. 38): 159–​66; E. Marshall, “Policy on DNA Research Troubles Tissue Bankers,” Science (1996): 271–​440; and Erik Parens, “Taking Behavioral Genetics Seriously,” Hastings Center Report, (1996, vol. 26, no. 4): 13–​18.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_024

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be devoted to improving the moral reasoning skills needed to address these issues. Until fairly recently, however, the evaluation of moral reasoning skills was limited, relegated to the realm of values and attitudes, and thought to be unmeasurable. Often, humanities in general and ethics in particular have been referred to as “soft” and “fuzzy” and believed not to be subject to any rigorous objective measurement or analysis. Historically, morality has been defined in many ways within both secular and religious frameworks. For the past several decades, intellectual thought in the field of the psychology of moral development has been particularly influenced by Kohlberg’s cognitive moral development theory.3 Kohlberg’s theory has produced years of quantitatively reproducible research, which supports three levels of moral development known as preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional or principled morality. Each level contains two stages. In the preconventional level of morality, stage one is an authority-​ punishment stage in which what is considered right is whatever the authority figures say to do, and the reason for doing it is to avoid punishment. Stage two is an egoistic, instrumental exchange in which what is considered right is whatever meets one’s own needs, but with a sense of fairness in terms of equal exchange between parties in agreement. Basically, it is a “what’s in it for me” attitude, or “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” approach to morality. Stage three moves into the conventional level of morality involving mutual interpersonal expectations, peer relationships, and interpersonal conformity in which what is considered right is what is expected by people close and important to you. “Being good” becomes important in the roles one occupies. Stage four involves a societal maintenance and conscience orientation in which one fulfills one’s agreed upon duties and contributes to the welfare of the whole group, institution, or society. Right is defined in terms of that which maintains a smoothly running society and avoids the breakdown of the system. Within the postconventional or principled level of morality, stage five emphasizes individual rights such as life and liberty but endorses a social contract that protects all peoples’ rights with a commitment freely entered upon

3 See the following: Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice vol. I (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981); Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development, The Philosophy of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages, vol. ii (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984); and Lawrence Kohlberg, “Stage and Sequence: The Cognitive-​Development Approach to Socialization,” in David A. Goslin, ed., Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research (Chicago: Houghton Mifflin, 1969): 347–​480.

264 Chapter 20 to serve the greatest good for the greatest number. It is based upon a rational calculation of the best welfare of all humankind. Lastly, stage six is based on a commitment to universal ethical principles of justice, equality, autonomy, and respect for the dignity of all human beings as individual persons. Although laws and social agreements are usually valid because they are based on these principles, when laws violate these principles, one acts in accordance with the principles. Right is whatever is required by one’s personal commitment to uphold these universal ethical principles. Kohlberg’s theory contends that people proceed through these stages in an invariant sequence as they mature, although the rate and end stage reached vary with the individual. It is important to understand that only the type of justification or logic of the reasoning is considered in assigning a stage score, and not a particular set of values or moral beliefs. That is, it is only the capacity for moral reasoning that is being tested, not the person’s particular set of moral beliefs or values. For example, one could be scored at stage four while holding either conservative or liberal values is immaterial to the reasoning capacity for supporting whatever happens to be held. It is not what one believes but why one believes it that is being analyzed. Scores of studies in twenty-​six cultures throughout the world have established the cross-​cultural validity of Kohlberg’s system under a wide variety of socioeconomic situations.4 There are clear differences between moral reasoning and moral behavior. Moral reasoning, on the one hand, refers to the thinking in which a person engages when facing a particular situation. It involves a cognitive process rather than value content. Moral behavior, on the other hand, refers to individual action. Although extensively addressed in the literature, the relationship between moral reasoning and moral behavior is complex and not well understood. However, some studies have suggested that there is a positive link between high moral reasoning and virtuous moral behavior.5 In particular, other

4 See the following:  John R.  Snarey, “Cross-​Cultural Universality of Social-​Moral Development: A Critical Review of Kohlbergian Research,” Psychological Bulletin, 97 (1985): 202–​32; and M. Nissan and Lawrence Kohlberg, “Universality and Cross-​Cultural Variation in Moral Development: A Longitudinal and Cross-​Sectional Study in Turkey,” Child Development, 53 (1982): 865–​76. 5 See the following:  Dan Candee and Lawrence Kohlberg, “Moral Judgment and Moral Action: A Reanalysis of Haan, Smith, and Block’s (1968) Free Speech Movement Data,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52 (1987): 554–​64; and Dan Candee and Lawrence Kohlberg, “The Relationship of Moral Judgment to Moral Action” in Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development, vol. ii, 498–​581.

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studies have shown a significant correlation between high moral reasoning and virtuous clinical performance as a medical practitioner.6 With such a link in the relationship of moral reasoning and moral action, one would expect that genetics students with higher levels of moral reasoning skills would likely be more ethical in their behavior. Otherwise, their virtuous behavior would be arbitrary or at least determined by something other than moral reasoning. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill:  men and women are human beings before they are lawyers or physicians or geneticists, and if you help them be capable and sensible human beings, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians or geneticists.7 The hypothesis of this current study was that there would be an increase in moral reasoning skills following a course taught specifically to address ethical issues in genetics. If this hypothesis were shown to be true, this would confirm the importance of formally addressing the ethical issues in genetics and of offering sufficient exposure to make a significant difference. In addition, it could support the argument that a course on the ethical issues in genetics should be required of all genetics students rather than elective as is often the case. This study permits a better understanding of the moral reasoning skills of genetics students. In addition to providing important new baseline data and identifying potential areas of needed improvement, the study also provides a basis for future research examining the connection between students’ moral reasoning and their moral behavior. 2

Methods

Kohlberg’s cognitive moral development theory, which provided the theoretical basis for this study, has been described in summary and in detail elsewhere.8 6

7 8

See the following: T. Joseph Sheehan, Susan D.R. Husted, Daniel Candee, C.D. Cook, and Mark Bargen, “Moral Judgment as a Predictor of Clinical Performance,” Evaluation and the Health Professions, 3 (1980): 393–​404; Donnie J. Self, M. Olivarez, and D.C. Baldwin Jr., “Clinical Performance and Moral reasoning Skills in a Family Practice Clerkship,” Annals of Behavioral Science and Medical Education, 10 (20024); 22–​25; and D.C. Baldwin Jr., T.E. Adamson, T. Joseph Sheehan, Donnie J. Self, and Andrew A. Oppenberg, “Moral Reasoning and Malpractice: A Pilot Study of Orthopedic Surgeons,” American Journal of Orthopedics,25 (1996): 481–​84. Albert William Levi, ed. The Six Great Humanistic Essays of John Stuart Mill (New York: Washington Square Press, 1963), 313. See the following: Donnie J. Self, S. Safford, and G.C. Shelton, “A Comparison of the General Moral Reasoning of Small Animal Veterinarians v. Large Animal Veterinarians,” Journal of American Veterinary Association, 193 (1988):  1509–​12; S.A. Goldman and J.  Abuthnot, “Teaching Medical Ethics: The Cognitive-​Developmental Approach,” Journal of Medical

266 Chapter 20 The intervention study presented here pre-​tested and post-​tested a group of students looking for any change in their moral reasoning skills following exposure to a course specifically designed to address a number of ethical and social issues in genetics. The instrument used for measurement of moral reasoning skills was the Defining Issues Test (dit) of Rest,9 which is a written version of the original oral Moral Judgment Interview (mji) of Kohlberg.10 It can be group administered and computer scored. Like the original Kohlberg mji, the dit presents moral dilemmas for subjects to resolve. However, instead of asking open-​ended probe questions like the mji, the dit offers multiple considerations from which the subject chooses the one believed to be the most important in resolving the dilemma. Subjects are asked to choose from among twelve considerations given for each of six moral dilemmas. For example, one of the stories is the classic Heinz dilemma of whether he should steal a drug to try to save the life of his wife who is dying of cancer. Scores on the dit range from a low of 0 to a high of 95 and are correlated to the six stages of moral reasoning found in Kohlberg’s moral development theory.11 A subject’s score, which is expressed in terms of the percentage of responses chosen that reflect the higher level or principled stage of moral reasoning, is known as the subject’s P-​score. Several choices of complex but meaningless phrases are offered to check for the validity of the subject’s seriousness in taking the test, thereby ruling out indiscriminate answers being given randomly. The dit is the most widely used instrument for assessing moral reasoning. It has been used in hundreds of studies of moral reasoning, and has been the subject of an extensive literature.12 The dit is also cost-​effective and efficient

9 10 11

12

Ethics, 5 (1979):  170–​80; Lawrence Kohlberg, “Moral Stages and Moralization:  The Cognitive Developmental Approach,” in Thomas Lickona, ed., Moral Development and Behavior: Theory, Research, and Social Issues (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976), 31–​53; and Anne Colby, Lawrence Kohlberg, Betsy Speicher, Alexandra Hewer, Danial Candee, John Gibbs, and Clark Power, The Measurement of Moral Judgment: Theoretical Foundations and Research Validation, vol. I (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). See James R. Rest, Development in Judging Moral Issues (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979). See Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development: The Philosophy of Moral Development, vol. ii. See the following: James R. Rest, Guide for the Defining Issues Test (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); and C.F. Alozie, “An Analysis of the Interrelationship of Two Measures Used in the Measurement of Moral Judgment Development:  The Kohlberg Judgment Interview and the Rest Defining Issues Test (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1976). See the following: R.M. Martin, M. Shafto, and W. Vandeinse, “The Reliability, Validity, and Design of the Defining Issues Test,” Developmental Psychology, 13 (1977): 460–​68; and W.J.

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when compared to Kohlberg’s Moral Judgment Interview (mji) or Gibbs’ Sociomoral Reflection Measure (srm).13 However, the dit, unlike the mji or the srm, measures recognition or preference of given moral reasons rather than the spontaneous generation of moral reasoning and justification. After taking the dit as a pretext to classroom exposure to various ethical issues, the students participated in a course that sought to provide an understanding of the scientific, factual basis of ethical issues in genetics while focusing on applied decision making. The course involved thirty contact hours emphasizing current issues and the process of option analysis. The content of the course was divided between creating a sound philosophical base, discussing cases, and developing student-​led resolution projects. All phases of the course, philosophical, scientific, and moral reasoning, were aimed at promoting critical thinking, introspection, tolerance, self-​understanding, and moral reasoning skills. Following the course, a post-​test was administered at the end of the semester to assess any change in students’ moral reasoning skills. Participation was voluntary. For the purpose of statistical analysis, a significant difference in the dit scores between test administrations was set at the p≤.05 level. Demographic data included gender and age. 3

Results

A total of twenty-​seven students participated in the study initially. Complete pre-​test and post-​test dit data were obtained on twenty-​four students. The mean dit pre-​test score was 47.1 (sd=15.75) and the mean dit post-​test score was 55.9 (sd=14.07). Statistical analyses showed a significant (p≤0.0027) increase in scores from pre-​test to post-​test. This finding is consistent with studies that indicate that the intervention of teaching a medical ethics course to first-​year medical students significantly increases their moral reasoning skills.14 Analysis of the data by gender revealed that there was a significant increase from pre-​test to post-​test within gender for males (p≤0.0095) and almost so for females (p≤0.0650) but no significant difference between genders for pre-​test (p≤0.7948), post-​test (p≤0.8040), or rate of change (p≤0.5500).

13 14

Froming and E.B. McColgan, “Comparing the Defining Issues test and the Moral Dilemma Interview,” Developmental Psychology, 15 (1979): 658–​59. See John C. Gibbs and Keith F. Widaman, Social Intelligence: Measuring the Development of Sociomoral Reflection (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-​Hall, 1982). See the following:  Donnie J.  Self, D.C. Baldwin Jr., and F.D. Wolinsky, “Evaluation of Teaching Medical Ethics by an Assessment of Moral Reasoning,” 26 (May 1992): 178–​84.

268 Chapter 20 Similarly, statistical analysis showed no correlation with age for either the pre-​ test (p≤0.04450) or post-​test (p≤0.7739), probably due to the narrow age range of the students in the study. 4

Discussion

Kohlberg’s cognitive moral development theory holds the principle of justice to be the highest form of morality.15 Thus, largely based on Rawls’ interpretation of justice as fairness,16 what is morally right or good is that which is most fair to all concerned. Moral development and moral reasoning, from this perspective, are ultimately justice development and justice reasoning. Of course, not everyone accepts or interprets morality in terms of justice. For example, Gilligan, Noddings, and other feminist theorists have argued for care, compassion, and responsiveness to other persons as the basis for morality.17 They have criticized Kohlberg’s theory for having a male bias since his original study was done only with male subjects. However, most reports of studies in moral development have been based on Kohlberg’s cognitive moral development theory, and recent empirical studies have indicated that these assertions of a potential male bias are not accurate.18 It is interesting to note that, in this current study, there were no significant differences in dit scores between genders on either the pre-​test or post-​test in spite of the fact that gender differences in moral reasoning have frequently been found in other studiers with medical students and with veterinary 15 16 17

18

See Lawrence Kohlberg, “Stage and Sequence: the Cognitive-​Development Approach to Socialization,” 347–​80. See John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness,” Journal of Philosophy, 54 (1957): 653–​62, and John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). See the following: Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1982); Nel Noddings, Caring:  A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1984); Carol Gilligan and J. Attanucci, “Two Moral Orientations: Gender Differences and Similarities,” Merrill-​Palmer Quarterly, 33 (1988): 223–​37; and Nona Plessner Lyons, “Two Perspectives: On Self, Relationships, and Morality,” Harvard Educational Review, 53, 2 (1983): 125–​45. See the following:  Donnie J.  Self and Margie Olivarez, “The Influence of Gender on Conflicts of Interest in the Allocation of Limited Critical Care Resources:  Justice vs. Care,” Journal of Critical Care, 8, 1 (1993):  64–​74; Arthur Dobrin, “Ethical Judgments of Male and Female Social Workers,” 34, 5 (1989): 451–​55; and Donnie J. Self, A.B. Pierce, and J.A. Shadduck, “Description and Evaluation of a Course in Veterinary Ethics,” Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association, 207 (1995): 1550–​53.

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students.19 In those studies, females consistently scored higher on the dit than did their male counterparts. 5

Conclusion

This study demonstrates that the teaching of ethical issues in genetics can be rigorously measured and analyzed and that it can have a positive influence on the moral reasoning skills of students. It demonstrates that issues of social justice can be successfully addressed and positively influenced in terms of justice reasoning by providing a course on medical issues in genetics. No longer do the areas of values and attitudes have to be relegated to the “soft sciences” that cannot be rigorously measured and tested. Although there was a small sample size for the study, a strong significant difference was found which is all the more interesting given the analysis demands of such a small sample. While this study demonstrates that moral reasoning skills can be taught and objectively measured, further longitudinal studies need to be done to assess the status of moral reasoning skills during all levels of education and practice. It is not clear what influence the stressful environment of graduate training and the practice of medical genetics has on moral reasoning skills. Furthermore, additional studies are needed regarding the relationship of moral reasoning skills and behavioral manifestations flowing from those skills. The relationship between moral reasoning and moral behavior is complex and not fully understood.20 A limitation of the study is the fact that it was done at one school, Texas A&M University, a large public institution in a rural area of the Southwest. This study needs to be replicated in a variety of settings (different regions of the 19

20

See the following: D.C. Baldwin Jr., S.F. Daugherty, and Donnie J. Self, “Changes in Moral Reasoning During Medical School,” Academic Medicine, 66 (1991): SI-​S3; D.C. Baldwin Jr., Margie Olivarez, and Donnie J.  Self, “Clarifying the Relationship of medical Education and Moral Development,” Academic Medicine, 73 (1998): 72–​75; D.C. Baldwin Jr., Margie Olivarez, Donnie J.  Self, and D.C. Shadduck, “Clarifying the Relationship of Veterinary Medical Education and Moral Development,” Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association, 209 (1996): 2002–​04; D.C. Baldwin Jr, Donnie J. Self, J.A. Shadduck, and F.D. Wolinsky, “Further Exploration of the Relationship Between Veterinary Medical Education and Moral Development,” Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 20 (1993): 140–​47; and D.C. Baldwin, Jr., Donnie J. Self, and F.D. Wolinsky, “Further Exploration of the Relationship Between Medical Education and Moral Development,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 5 (1996): 449–​49. See A.  Blasi, “Bridging Moral Cognition and Moral action:  A Critical Review of the Literature,” Psychological Bulletin, 88 (1980): 1–​45.

270 Chapter 20 country, urban and rural environments, public and private schools, large and small class sizes, religious and secular schools). Similarly, further studies are needed regarding how much exposure is sufficient to increase moral reasoning skills and what kinds of activities best foster practice in moral (e.g., reasoning lecture, role-​playing, case-​study discussion, films). Although some of these studies have begun,21 more work is needed. 21

See the following:  D.C. Baldwin Jr., Margie Olivarez, and Donnie J.  Self, “The Amount of Small-​Group Case-​Study Discussion Required to Improve moral Reasoning Skills of Medical Students,” Academic Medicine, 73 (1998):  521–​23; and D.C. Baldwin Jr., Margie Olivarez, and Donnie J. Self, Academic Medicine, 68 (1993): 383–​85.

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Introduction to the Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy Rorty and Pragmatism is one of the first volumes in the Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy. The series focuses on the origins and boundaries of American thought, its roots and edges, and joins an understanding of past philosophical inquiries with the pressing issues of current philosophical investigations. Concentrating on American philosophy is a pragmatic strategy that provides an intellectual baseline for considerations radiating far beyond North America. Philosophy, after all, is a discipline that is neither parochial nor national in outlook. The purpose of the Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy is to advance philosophy by enhancing our knowledge of the past and by providing a body of inquiry for future generations. 1

Rorty and Pragmatism

Richard Rorty’s challenge to traditional forms of philosophical inquiry has brought accolades and criticisms. He argues that philosophy cannot become a strict science and that the traditional view of philosophy as the pursuit of eternal truth must be abandoned in a temporalized world.1 To assume that philosophy is at the top of the hierarchy of disciplines is a mistake. Rather, philosophy should be understood from a pragmatic, interpretive, and historicist perspective that undermines the centrality of basic, foundational questions in philosophy of mind and epistemology.2 Clarity and precision are not to be eschewed, but clarity is a matter of familiarity, not an intrinsic property of certain locutions. Rorty’s anti-​essentialist philosophy is in the lineage of Wittgenstein’s “philosophical therapy” in which pseudo-​problems are resolved or, better, dissolved.3 But in this volume he is more hesitant to deride these problems as meaningless 1 Richard Rorty, ed. The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), 33. 2 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 7. 3 Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1991), 99.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_025

272 Chapter 21 or nonsense, and he focuses more sharply on the utility of the essentialist tradition: I have sometimes used Wittgensteinian pejoratives like “nonsense,” “meaningless,” etc., but I regret having done so. I think Wittgenstein was wiser when he said that you can give anything a sense if you want to. Epistemologists have given various questions sense in the same way as astrologers and theologians gave their questions sense:  by embedding them in a coherent language-​game. But questions about the utility of all three language-​games persist.4 Rorty’s analysis of the philosophical enterprise has generated many criticisms, some impassioned and others more thoughtfully forceful. In this volume, Rorty responds to several of his most prominent and thoughtful critics: Hartshorne, Lavine, Bernstein, Gouinlock, Hance, Haack, and Farrell. These critics represent a wide range of philosophical backgrounds and concerns, but each raises significant questions about Rorty’s philosophical outlook. Whether one agrees with Rorty’s responses or not, the replies are consequential. They provide insight into Rorty’s thought, its development, and his sense of the future of philosophy. They further the discussion of the role of philosophy and of its contributions to society. 2

Rorty and Dewey

Richard Rorty’s approach to philosophy is Janus-​faced, looking both at the history and the future of philosophy.5 His most articulated historical ties are to John Dewey, whom he views as a teacher and leader but not as the ultimate arbiter. Rorty’s exegesis of Dewey’s pragmatism returns philosophy, and American thought, to a set of original insights holding substantial promise for contemporary concerns. But his exegesis goes beyond explication. Dewey’s voice is filtered through Rorty’s view of the role of philosophy, and, as quickly as Rorty notes his discipleship to Dewey, he marks his differences. He jettisons Dewey’s notions of experience and scientific method, arguing that each contributes little 4 Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., ed. Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to His Critics (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995), 223. 5 The two independent essays by Rorty in this volume, “Dewey Between Hegel and Darwin,” and “Philosophy and the Future,” represent both outlooks.

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and leads to considerable confusion if taken seriously. His critics argue that Rorty throws the baby out with the bathwater, and they often reject his analysis of Dewey and also his account of pragmatism’s implications for current discussions. In this volume, Rorty argues that pragmatism is a historicist way of “avoiding the conflict between science and the religious or moral consciousness,” substituting “expediency for accuracy or concreteness as a term of epistemic approbation.”6 He is concerned that philosophy advance rather than impede inquiry, and he views this concern as providing a specific role for philosophy: “the particular charge of philosophy is to make sure that old philosophical ideas do not block the road of inquiry—​that continued use of the normative language employed in the social and moral strifes of an earlier day does not make it harder to cope with contemporary problems.”7 Some of these old philosophical ideas are found in Dewey, while others infect contemporary methodology where the spirit (not the letter) of Dewey’s pragmatism can serve as a corrective. Rorty agrees with Hilary Putnam that much of analytic philosophy degenerates into quarrels among differing “intuitions” of the philosophical professoriate, often about questions “far from having either practical or spiritual significance.”8 And he maintains that Dewey’s approach makes pragmatism more useful in philosophical investigations: Dewey would have been pleased by the fact that the twentieth century has spent increasingly little time talking about the nature of ultimate reality. In part this has been because the increasing prominence of Language as a topic, accompanied by an increasing recognition that one can describe the same thing in different ways for different purposes, has helped to make pragmatism, as a doctrine of the relativity of normative judgments to purposes served, more palatable. More important, perhaps, is that lots of different developments in our century—​Freudian accounts of inner moral conflicts, ethnographic descriptions of alternative forms of social life, experimentalism in literature and the arts—​have made it steadily easier for us to substitute Deweyan questions such as, Which communities’ purposes shall I share? and What sort of person would I prefer to be? for the Kantian questions, What Should I Do? What May I Hope? What is Man?9 6 Herman Saatkamp, ed., Rorty and Pragmatism, 4. 7 Ibid., 14. 8 Ibid., 202. 9 Ibid., 15.

274 Chapter 21 3

Rorty and the Future of Philosophy

In the concluding essay of this volume, “Philosophy and the Future,” Rorty’s optimism about philosophy’s ongoing future will surprise some, and others will question his decided endorsement of democracy as central to the philosopher’s role. But both perspectives are integral strands in the thread of Rorty’s temporalized intellectual world. For Rorty, the future of philosophy is secure as long as there are social and cultural changes: “[P]‌hilosophy cannot possibly end until social and cultural change ends. …In free societies, there will always be a need for their [philosophers’] services, for such societies never stop changing, and hence never stop making old vocabularies obsolete.”10 The new challenges of the temporalized intellectual world are freedom and time. No longer servants of truth but “servants of democracy,”11 philosophers should prize the freedom “to be honest with one another and not be punished for it.”12 Abandoning hope for certainty and eternal perspectives, philosophers also should abandon the insistence that their institutions are more than contingent historical products: “Truthfulness, like freedom, is temporal, contingent, and fragile. But we can recognize both when we have them.”13 Philosophers should view their roles as historicized: “If we stop preening ourselves on our position at the top of the hierarchy of disciplines, stop identifying our professional practices with ‘rational thought’ or ‘clear thought,’ we shall be in a better position to grant Dewey’s point that our discipline is no more able to set its own agenda than in engineering or jurisprudence. Such an admission would help us dispense with the idea that scientific or political developments require ‘philosophical foundations’—​the idea that judgment must remain suspended on the legitimacy of cultural novelties until we philosophers have pronounced them authentically rational.”14 The philosophical task is in accord with Dewey’s remarks that “philosophy can proffer only hypotheses, and that these hypotheses are of value only as they render men’s minds more sensitive to the life about them.”15 This new philosophical

10 Ibid., 198. 11 Ibid., 205. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 201. 15 John Dewey, Essays, Miscellany, and Reconstruction in Philosophy, The Middle Works of John Dewey, 199–​1924, ed. Jo Ann Boydston et al. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 91–​92.

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goal is the creation of a sensitivity to life rather than the production of new knowledge. 4

Rorty’s Responses to His Critics

Richard Rorty responds with care to the articles in this volume, often analyzing and replying to specific arguments and criticisms. Some may fault the accuracy and adequacy of his responses, but he clearly takes his critics’ assessments seriously, and his rejoinders are not mere ripostes. His replies not only reveal his arguments and leaning in philosophical debate; they also disclose personal interests and biographical details. The following comments and quotes are mere adumbrations of the range and articulation of Rorty’s responses. It is fitting that the first critique is by Charles Hartshorne, who was Rorty’s first teacher of philosophy. There is a charm to Rorty’s response, that of a highly regarded student replying to his highly regarded mentor: “Charles Hartshorne was the first teacher to excite in me a genuine enthusiasm for philosophy. I had wandered into a philosophy major without any clear idea of what awaited me, and I should probably wandered out again had I not started to take courses with Hartshorne.”16 His study with Hartshorne led to his early considerations of contingency and time:  “I was also impressed by Hartshorne’s citation of Bergson’s remark ‘if time is not real, nothing is real,’ a remark which keeps coming back to me as I write yet another panegyric to historicity and contingency.”17 And even his first philosophical article recalled: The first philosophical article I ever wrote was an attempt to ally Wittgenstein with Peirce—​to view them both as temporalistic critics of Platonism, necessity, eternity, and Carnap. (It was, of course, the Peirce of Evolutionary Love, rather than the Peirce of the Logic of Relatives, whom I admired most). Thirty-​some years down the road, I am still on the same temporalistic kick, and still have pretty much the same reactions to reading Hartshorne (and, for that matter, Carnap) as I did back then.18 Although clear in his criticisms of Hartshorne, Rorty also is gracious in his praise: 16 Ibid., 29. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 30–​31.

276 Chapter 21 I have pulled no punches in saying how sharply I disagree with Hartshorne’s central philosophical convictions. I should like to balance this by being equally frank about my admiration for Hartshorne as a teacher and human being. A nineteen-​year-​old trying to decide what to do with his life is bound to be influenced by the role models he happens to encounter. In the course of studying with Hartshorne, it struck me that if this sort of person was a philosophy professor, then becoming a philosophy professor was probably not such a bad idea. I do not think that I managed to live up to his example, either of intellectual passion or of generosity of spirit, but I  am proud to have been Hartshorne’s student.19 This dialogue between former student and professor provides a model for the best of scholarly relationships, and surely Rorty’s focus on creating a sensitivity to freedom and time is consonant with of Hartshorne’s teaching. Rorty’s encounter with his critics has other gracious moments as when he says that he agrees with “almost everything” in Bernstein’s paper. And of Hance he writes: “I am grateful to Allen Hance for having read widely in my writings and for giving a very accurate account of my view of the history of modern philosophy. In writing about that history, I have never been happy with what I have said about Hegel. Much of Hegel remains mysterious to me. In particular, I cannot read The Science of Logic with interest, or pleasure, or understanding, or to the end.”20 And of Farrell’s Subjectivity, Realism, and Postmodernism—​The Recovery of the World: “It is the sort of book I hope we get more of—​one that moves easily back and forth between Hegel and Davidson, and between Dennett and Derrida, while maintaining a consistent point of view and developing a strong, focused line of argument. I particularly admire Farrell’s thoughtful and original use of Blumenberg’s account of the Ockhamite origins of Bacon, Descartes, and the modern world.”21 But Rorty’s amiable appraisals of some of his critics do not mask areas of strong disagreement. Lavine and Gouinlock call to question Rorty’s account of Dewey and his allegiance to question Rorty’s account of Dewey and his allegiance to pragmatism. Their concerns spark the following responses: “Every disciple of a great philosopher has a duty to his or to her master to distinguish the spirit from the letter of his or her teachings. This duty arises from the fact that not everything the great philosopher says convinced everybody. He or she was not, it always turns out, the Last 19 Ibid., 36. 20 Ibid., 122. 21 Ibid., 189.

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Philosopher—​the one who got everything straightened out, sorted things out so well that no further philosophy is needed,”22 and “The trouble with the kind of treatment which Dewey gets from Lavine and Gouinlock, it seems to me, is that these commentators stick so closely to the letter that they can make no concessions to current audiences.”23 Haack sees Rorty as “probably the most influential critic of the epistemological enterprise in contemporary English-​speaking philosophy,”24 and couples Rorty with Stich because both “repudiate the idea that criteria of justification should be judged by their truth-​indicativeness. Rorty thinks the idea makes no sense; Stich, that it is narrow-​minded and parochial.”25 Haack calls both “vulgar pragmatists,” challenging their claim to the lineage of classical pragmatism (joining Lavine and Gouinlock), a challenge she explicitly argues within her article. A sample of Rorty’s response follows: “Haack is more or less right in suggesting that I am prepared to turn sociologist of knowledge. But I should prefer to say ‘historian, sociologist, and moralist of knowledge,’ where moralist means something like ‘somebody with suggestions about the costs and benefits of changing your sense of relevance in specific ways.’ A ‘moralist of knowledge’ in this sense is pretty much the same thing as what is sometimes called a ‘culture critic.’ ”26 And of his more fundamental difference with Haack he writes: One of the disagreements between Haack and myself is that she thinks that epistemology is a natural and obvious topic of reflection, whereas I think that it survives nowadays only because some philosophy professors still think it important to take epistemic skepticism seriously—​a spiritual exercise I find profitless. Once you get rid of the skeptic (in the way, for example, in which Michael Williams gets rid of Barry Stroud in the former’s Unnatural Doubts), then I think you have little motive for waxing epistemological (unless you get a kick out of refuting once again, as hack seems to do successfully, the foundationalists, the reliabilists, and the reductionists). I see James and Dewey (and even Peirce at his best—​ in the anti-​Cartesian “Capacities” papers—​despite the empty bombast of passages like the one Haack quotes) as having done an especially good job of dissuading us from taking the skeptic seriously. They do so by asking us 22 Ibid., 52. 23 Ibid., 53. 24 Ibid., 126. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 225.

278 Chapter 21 to worry more about relevance and less about rigor (or, pace Lavine and Gouinlock, more about consequences than about method.27 Farrell writes that his motive for initiating his book was a belief that Rorty has given an account of recent philosophy not that reliable, and that he interprets certain figures wrong, Davidson in particular (see “Rorty and Antirealism” in Rorty and Pragmatism). Rorty responds to the reliability of his reading of Davidson, and also writes: “The realistic intuitions which he defends seem to have a purely spiritual function. If we both got off our ‘religious’ high horses we might be able to agree that nobody’s language has ever been or ever will be unconstrained by the world, and that nobody will ever be able to be interestingly specific about what these constraints are and how they work.”28 At several points in his replies Rorty notes developments in his own thought, as when he responds to Farrell: I think that Farrell is right to criticize that paper [“The World Well Lost”], and various other papers of mine, for suggesting that the only alternatives are a radical subjectivism in which the self projects schemes out upon a featureless reality (what Putnam satirized as “the cookie cutter view”) on the one hand, and an unknowable noumenon on the other…. But “The World Well Lost” was written twenty-​three years ago. Lately I  have been trying to mark out a position that does not take sides between subject and object, mind and world, but that instead tries to erase the contrast between them. I have, so to speak, been trying to lose both us and the world. Whereas Farrell reads me as trying to glorify us at the expense of the world, and hopes to rectify the balance with a “modest realism,” I want to stop using the us-​world contrast, and thus to get rid of the realism-​antirealism issue.”29 The above sampling provides a taste of the articles and responses in this volume, but they do not reveal the rich detail or the rigor and depth of thought found in them. I leave those delights for the reader to discover. Rarely do we have the chance to examine in one volume some of the best critiques of a major philosopher alongside his or her own direct responses. Rorty and Pragmatism provides us that opportunity, and in Rorty’s term, enlarges and enhances our own set of philosophical vocabularies: 27 Ibid., 225–​56. 28 Ibid., 194. 29 Ibid., 191.

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I think of the course of human history as a long, swelling, increasingly polyphonic poem—​a poem that leads up to nothing save itself. When the species is extinct, “human nature’s total message” will not be a set of propositions, but a set of vocabularies—​the more, and the more various, the better. Nobody will get the message, I  suspect, since I  still find no reason to agree with James and Hartshorne that “the best things are the more eternal things.” But I do not see why eternity, or the silence of the infinite spaces, should matter.30 30

Ibid., 33–​34.

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Is Animal Faith the End of Philosophy? 1

A Tribute to John Lachs1

I began my graduate studies with John Lachs at Vanderbilt University in 1967. It was John’s first year at Vanderbilt. As I moved forward with my own scholarship and career, John made the remarkable transition from being my Ph.D. advisor and mentor to being a dear and long-​standing friend. That first semester I wrote a paper on Santayana’s concept of animal faith, and John commented that if I wanted, the paper could become a dissertation, and it did. We all owe a great deal to John and Shirley Lachs, and we look forward to his continued contributions to our understanding of Santayana.2 He and I had looked forward to presenting separate papers on Santayana’s Scepticism and Animal Faith from our similar and also different perspectives. And we look forward to John’s future introduction to the critical edition of Scepticism and Animal Faith and perhaps a future paper in response to mine. My paper is half of what we had hoped to present, and I fear not the better half. 2

Structure of Scepticism and Animal Faith

John mentions in his video interview with Martin Coleman3 that he was never pleased with the second part of Scepticism and Animal Faith and that he now realizes why. As you will see in this article, I agree with John but I also suggest there are ways of reading the second half that make it even more engaging and that the implications of Santayana’s concept of animal faith are far deeper and broader for philosophy than Santayana’s reconstruction in the second part of the volume.

1 This address was originally presented on 6 January 2017 following a showing of the video of Martin Coleman’s interview with John Lachs at the annual meeting of the Santayana Society. 2 Although John Lachs did not attend the Santayana Society apa Session because of Shirley Lachs’s recent death, we all understood his absence and expressed our gratitude to him and to Shirley for their dedication and devotion to Santayanan scholarship. 3 See “Interview with John Lachs,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, (2018, no. 36): 8–​10.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_026

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Although the second part of Scepticism and Animal Faith may not be what one might have expected or even hoped for, I suggest that there is a delightful way to view the two parts of Scepticism rather than only suggesting it moves in the wrong or unexpected direction. This approach involves understanding Santayana’s sense of humor and his delight in upending philosophical inquiry. In other words, one should read the entire book with the sense of Santayana smiling over one’s shoulder and his delight if you catch on. The conclusion of the first part of Scepticism and Animal Faith is a purposeful dead end: the solipsism of the present moment. With a smile, Santayana takes the approach of finding a rational basis for knowledge and belief. Taking the objects of reasoning and consciousness, he shows that a thorough analysis does not lead to any basis for knowledge or belief. Rather it ends in the contemplation of a momentary essence without belief or knowledge. This is an enchanting reduction ad absurdum argument that challenges the rational basis for all knowledge and belief. It upends the very basis of philosophy and even scientific investigation if one assumes that thought, reasoning, and rational argument are the foundations of knowledge, belief and action. So where does one go from such a conclusion? Sadly one goes nowhere if consciousness and reason are our guides, rather we are left in an epistemological solipsism, the end result of a thorough-​going skepticism. Santayana is using reason to undermine rationality itself. Skeptical doubts taken to the extreme remove the foundation for reason, and, in so doing undermine the basis of skepticism itself. That quiet humor of Santayana and, as we shall see, of others is no longer hiding behind the curtain. Instead of doubt and reason being our guide, perhaps we can find the pathway to knowledge and action by recognizing our commonality with all animals who must act and make decisions. Santayana takes that turn and rebuilds our abilities to decide and act on the basis of animal faith. Animal faith provides the basis for action, belief, and knowledge. It does not have a rational base, rather it springs naturally from our psyche (our physiological structure and environment). Consciousness, reason, belief, and action are all aftereffects of the undercurrents in our physiological being and environment. With the concept of animal faith, Santayana brings human beings back into the animal kingdom by making reason and consciousness aftereffects of our physical development, aftereffects that have evolved through our ancestral history as with all other animals. Santayana is reviving Hume’s complex notion of natural belief, but he does so in Santayana’s early twentieth-​century setting. Hume wrote in 1739 that “reason is, and ought only

282 Chapter 22 to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”4 And Santayana’s view also has common streams with Wittgenstein’s account in On Certainty where he responds to G. E. Moore’s account of the proof of the external world. Moore’s claim that he has two hands is not something taught or that can be proved. Rather such knowledge is like the bed of a river that gives meaning and context to such claims but cannot itself be proved or doubted. But the river bed is the foundation of all the currents of consciousness, belief, reason and knowledge. Following the explication of the solipsism of the present moment that leads nowhere, one may expect Santayana to expound on the complexity of the physiological base of knowledge and reason, and to discuss the bedrock foundation of animal life that leads to actions. But instead, with a subtler smile, he begins his introduction to his realms of being: Essence, Truth, Spirit, and Matter, acknowledging that Truth is a subset of the realm of Essence. He gladly and joyfully takes ancient terminology, rejected by and abhorrent to his contemporaries, and uses it to renew the insights of the Greeks, and others, regarding our ability to act. In so doing, he establishes matter as the basis for Spirit (consciousness), noting clearly, and in opposition to his contemporaries, that consciousness is an aftereffect of material forces. This is a remarkable turn for his time, and he had little scientific evidence available that our material world and physical self are the river bed in which the currents of all consciousness and reason are guided. 3

Santayana’s Notion of Reason

Before any discussion of Santayana’s philosophy moves forward, or of anyone’s philosophy for that matter, one must consider what the role animal faith is in human life. If consciousness and reason are aftereffects of our physiology interacting with our environment, then consciousness and reason may be considered a non-​causal aspect of human life. Hence, the study of philosophy, if based on the role of reason as a determining factor in individual lives and in human history, becomes ineffectual. Indeed, some writers adopting modern approaches by scientists, maintain that philosophy is dead because reason is seen as not determinant in human action, and, if they knew the history of

4 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (London, Penguin, 1969), 462.

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philosophy, they might well indicate that Santayana wrote the obituary. How can that be? One of the central tenets of Santayana’s philosophy is the unity of mind and body. As mentioned earlier, thought is an aftereffect of our psyche (our material self, or perhaps more clearly our central nervous system). Conscious thought is not a causal agent in human activities but a result of physical activities in our bodies and sometimes the result of the physical interaction of our bodies with entities in our physical environment. Some scholars have classified Santayana as an epiphenomenalist because of this view. Classifying Santayana as an epiphenomenalist is wrong if one is trying to explicate Santayana’s exact position, and Santayana says so. He clearly explains that he is not an epiphenomenalist. Traditionally, epiphenomalism is defined as one entity generating another entity but that the second entity is epiphenomenal. It could be stated as one phenomenon generating another epiphenomenon. Clearly, Santayana does not think of thought as being a separate entity from the psyche, and in this case he notes that it is not emitted from a phenomenon but from a substance, the material world. Thought would have to be a separate entity generated by our psyche to be an epiphenomenon, but for Santayana, thought is not a separate entity existing independent from our physical being. He made this clear in a 1913 letter to his former graduate student, Horace Kallen: And this leads me to make a slight complaint against you for having said that I am an “epiphenomenalist”—​I don’t complain of your calling me a “pragmatist” because I know that it is mere piety on your part. But the title of epiphenomenalist is better deserved, and I have only this objection to it: that it is based (like the new realism) on idealistic prejudices and presuppositions. An epiphenomenon must have some other phenomenon under it: but what underlies the mind, according to my view, is not a phenomenon but a substance—​the body, or nature at large. To call this is [sic] a phenomenon is to presuppose another thing in itself, which is chimerical. Therefore I  am no epiphenomenalist, but a naturalist pure and simple, recognizing a material world, not a phenomenon but a substance, and a mental life struck off from it in its operation, like a spark from the flint and steel, having no other substance than that material world, but having a distinct existence of its own (as it is emitted continually out of bodily life as music is emitted from an instrument) and having a very different kind of being, since it is immaterial and moral and cognitive. This mental life may be called a phenomenon if you like, either in the platonic sense of being an instance of an essence (in which sense every fact, even substance, is a phenomenon) or in the modern sense of

284 Chapter 22 being an observable effect of latent forces; but it cannot be called an epiphenomenon, unless you use the word phenomenon in the one sense for substance and in the other sense for consciousness.5 Hence, thought is a result of physical activity and is united with that activity, and since it is last in the string of causal events it has no causal impact on the world. Reason is organized thinking, providing meaning and structure to our experience and is usually thought of as a guide to living well. But if reason is dependent on thought, and thought is an aftereffect of other physical occurrences that has no further causal impact, then how can reason be a guide to life or the object of philosophical study? In this case, reason would provide an after-​the-​fact account giving meaning and support for decisions already made. And reason would not play any guiding role in human action. In fact, some eminent scientists have declared that philosophy is dead because empirical evidence is now supporting reason being a secondary aspect of human activity. Stephen Hawking, for example, makes such a declaration, citing neurologist Ben Libet of the University of California, San Francisco, who found that the brain’s processes occur nearly half a second before a person consciously decides to begin an action. In other words, there are action-​specific electrical activities in the brain that precede any awareness of a decision being made to act.6 Consciousness, thought, reason are aftereffects of physical activities that precede them. Of course, this is Santayana’s view! That he advanced it far before neuroscience was a discipline is remarkable. Missing in contemporary neurophysiological explanations of human activities and a singularly important element that Santayana highlighted. He added the view that conscious life is not only an aftereffect of other physical interactions but that it is also celebrational. Perhaps in the same way when we encounter a smell that brings back memories of home, or a painting that is beautiful, or an encounter with another human being that elicits a wonderful sense of warmth, love, or natural sympathy. Humans, like other animals, are action oriented as Santayana carefully explicates and expands in his concept of animal faith. Instead of being rational agents, we, like all animals, are decision makers and our decisions are revealed in our actions. We are decision makers and not rational agents. Our physicality precedes and determines any conscious moment or streams of consciousness. 5 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Two, 1910–​1920, William G. Holzberger (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2002), 127. My underlining for emphasis. 6 Robert A. Burton, “The Life of Meaning (Reason not Required),” New York Times, September 5, 2016.

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What then is the role of reason? Importantly, how could Santayana develop a life of reason when he so clearly noted our commonality with the animal world is based on faith and not reason, on actions and decision-​making that are fundamentally physical? It is our psyche (our physicality) that generates consciousness and thought as a non-​causal aftereffects, so what role can non-​ causal aftereffects play in human life? These are not simple or easy questions in light of research currently underway. And the questions become more complex when we realize we are not animals living isolated lives, but we are born into families, communities, states, and nations. What roles do our communal physicality and aftereffects play in social settings? Alas, there may be no simple or easy answers. Social movements and organizations may also be considered the product of complex physiological interactions in our families, communities, states, and nations. In large part, Jonathan Haidt makes such a claim in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.7 His thesis is that “intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” Our moral intuitions arise instantaneously and they determine and structure our later reasoning. Sound familiar? His principal metaphor is a rider on an elephant. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—​the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—​the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior … I’ll also use this metaphor to show you how you can better persuade people who seem unresponsive to reason.8 Brains evaluate everything in terms of potential threat or benefit to the self, and then adjust behavior to get more of the good stuff and less of the bad. Animal brains make such appraisals thousands of times a day with no need for conscious reasoning, all in order to optimize the brain’s answer to the fundamental question of animal life: Approach or avoid?9 If our moral psychology is rooted in our physiology, then the extent to which we have a commonality with others may depend on a common physiology generating our intuitions from our embedded moral psychology. Moral 7 Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Random House, 2012). 8 Ibid., xxi. 9 Ibid., 64.

286 Chapter 22 reasoning follows our physiology as the rider follows the elephant. Consciousness and reasoning are the results of complex physiological interactions within ourselves and between all other human bodies and our environment. So consciousness and reasoning are aftereffects of our psyche and are not primarily causal in our lives or in the lives of others. Reason and argument serve our physiology like a good lawyer serves his client, or like a good press agent serves their client. In making social and political choices, if Haidt is correct, we are not aware of 99% of the basis for those choices. Our reasoning is to justify that which we are not conscious of, to plead our case for moving left or right, for changing directions or staying a steady course. Our conscious lawyer seeks the best justification for actions already taken or ones that we may be physically leaning towards. The social implications of animal faith and the complexity leading to the aftereffects of consciousness and reason are significant, perhaps of major significance in understanding social behavior. Following Haidt’s analogy, we are the rider on an elephant, and the elephant explains 99% of our activities while the rider’s role is to justify our actions. If the elephant, regardless of his previous paths, begins to lean to the right, the rider justifies that action regardless of previous leanings. Our last presidential election is perhaps a good example. In a country established by immigrants, a Statue of Liberty welcoming all, and a growing acceptance of people of different faiths, races, creeds, and sexual preferences, the electorate shifted to the right, and justified that shift as a need for a change. And we elected a person as president who runs counter to previous qualifications thought necessary for the position and whose personal characteristics are not emblematic of the usual standards we hold. Yet many, perhaps most, evangelical Christians supported a person whose personal life contradicts the values of their religion. And many evangelical Christians are quick to justify their actions, to use their reasoning to present arguments in their favor. The white working class males appear to be following the same path. Explaining such different leanings is difficult if one has a rigid sense of truth or of character. Perhaps the complexity of human actions is a place to begin to find some explanation for our newly elected President, recognizing that reasoning plays a secondary role in human decisions. Then comes a very serious question. What then could possibly be the life of reason if it is not the principal guide to living life well and to shaping and governing our communities? The easiest route would be to end this essay now rather than trying to parse it out as if reason mattered. Tempting! But perhaps it is best to see what physiological activities generate my fingers to finish this paper and to enjoy being conscious of it occurring. So, here it comes.

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4

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Santayana’s Life of Reason

Perhaps George Santayana, Stephen Hawking, and Jonathan Haidt are correct. Consciousness and reasoning are aftereffects of prior physiological interactions, heritable traits and physical culture. That might seem to be the death of philosophy, but it is not. The rider on the elephant is unaware of all that is going on beneath her, but that may simply mean that consciousness and reasoning are embedded in the elephant Santayana calls our psyche. When we trumpet our reasoning and delight in our consciousness, we are simply expressing an outgrowth of these physical processes. Even so, our consciousness may provide some indication, even if only a surface index, to what is occurring in our psyche. Hence the enlarged task of philosophy is to try to understand where the index is pointing with the hope that scientific investigations will clarify the process and better explain the way we act and make decisions with our reasoning and consciousness reflecting those physical processes. And philosophy’s larger role is to articulate reasoning’s index and to explicate that relationship with scientific investigations. Hence, philosophy remains on top of the elephant, the highest of the disciplines, and discerning the role of the rider is the task of philosophy. The gigantic challenge is to coordinate what we see reflected in consciousness and reasoning with scientific studies in physics, biology, genetics, psychology and more. It is a much greater, more delightful and difficult task than simply analyzing the logic and rationality of our thought processes. Of course, Santayana did describe mental life as “having a very different kind of being, since it is immaterial and moral and cognitive.”10 This may be considered an odd characterization. The analogy of consciousness being “like a spark from the flint and steel” seems to mean that consciousness is material like the spark. It seems that although Santayana was going against many of the current and largely accepted views of the mind during his time, still he maintained that mental life was immaterial. That is a difficult issue to be resolved in another paper. Perhaps one avenue of explanation could be found in emergent properties like the temperature of the body that is not located in a place but is not thought of as independent of one’s physical being. But the central point here is that Santayana portrayed our conscious life (the life of the spirit) as being produced by the material forces of our psyche and the world around us in such a way that consciousness is an aftereffect and not a material cause of action. 10

The Letters of George Santayana, Book Two, 1910–​1920, ed. William G. Holzberger, 127.

288 Chapter 22 It would be hopeless to think that Santayana tried to coordinate his life of reason with the underlying physiological processes being discovered in the sciences of his day. He did not. But he did carefully note and describe the aspects of his life that produced activities that made his life delightful and worthwhile, and he decided to live accordingly. Hence, his consciousness was an index to his actions and what a good life was for him, the life of reason as he described it. He was aware of the preconditions for a good life. To lead a rational life there are prerequisites: reason can be cultivated only if one’s psyche (physical self), environment, social, cultural, and political circumstances are conducive to a life of reason. Such a life is possible only if one is able to take actions that are conducive to a good life in one’s particular circumstances, and there is enough stability in one’s social, political, cultural, and physical environment to support those actions. These actions are the effects of one’s physical interaction with the world around us and are reflected in one’s consciousness. One may take Santayana’s personal life as an example of actions leading to a life of reason. Prizing the development of his conscious (spiritual) life and realizing that development was dependent on his natural, physical self and environment, Santayana cultivated his life of reason. As for every human being, there was no choice in who his parents were, where he was born, the culture and attitudes he was raised in. But as he became of age, he began to structure his life to cultivate the qualities he was conscious of and cherished most. At Harvard, he was an outsider, and he cultivated that position by hosting discussions and meetings with many others who were also outsiders. His former students included a great variety of individuals such as poets Conrad Aiken, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Witter Bynner, and John Hall Wheelock; the essayists, journalists, and editors W.E.B. Du Bois, Walter Lippmann, Gilbert Seldes, Hutchins Hapgood, Scofield Thayer, Max Eastman, Herbert Seligman, and Van Wyck Brooks; and professors Austryn Wolfson, Horace Kallen, Baker Brownell, Samuel Eliot Morison; a Supreme Court Justice, Felix Frankfurter; many diplomats such as Bronson Cutting and the university president James B. Conant. He was popular, belonging to many Harvard organizations (perhaps twenty or so) and participating in the Boston community. Many scholars seem to overlook his many activities and even the fun he had at Harvard. He was part of the founding of the Harvard Lampoon, Hasty Pudding Club, the OK Club, the Harvard Monthly, and rarely is it noted that he was elected Pope! That is the position he was elected to when he helped form the Laodicean Club (a reference to the Laodicean Church in Revelation 3:14–​22 that was lukewarm and complacent). Yet, in 1893–​4 he went through a metanoia, a changing of one’s activities and taking a different track. His father’s death in 1893 and other personal

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experiences, no doubt, influenced this metanoia. He began planning for his retirement through savings and significant travel abroad. He found Harvard less and less to his liking, noting it was becoming too businesslike and was not fostering the intellectual life. “There are three traps that strangle philosophy: the church, the marriage bed, and the professor’s chair. I escaped from the first in my youth; the second I never entered, and as soon as possible I got out of the third.”11 For Santayana, consciousness and reason were aftereffects of one’s psyche and its interaction with the physical world and environment. Even so, one can live a good life if one attends to these aftereffects and discerns their indices to what enables one to prosper and flourish as a physical being living in a world of action. 4

Complexity and the Role of Philosophy

Regardless of how we discern reason and its roles in human life, contemporary evidence indicates it may be far more complex and interactive than traditional philosophical approaches. For Santayana, truth regarding the material world was based on a correspondence theory. True statements about the world corresponded to the actual facts in the world, that is, true statements accurately denote the embodied essences in matter. However, our ability to discover truth about the material world was based on a form of the pragmatic theory of truth. We are never able to discern the correspondence of our statements to the facts of the material world because we can never escape our embodiment in a particular environment. An unbiased view is not humanly possible. But we can approach this truth by trial and error, by projecting our statements on the world and testing them out. We will never have absolute certainty, only a collection of evidence that appears to support our views. Hence, Santayana began to recognize the complexity of reasoning, beliefs, knowledge and truth claims. In short, the role of empirical sciences and their implications for human behavior are not clear or simple. Genetics is a relatively new field in which most human and animal activity is considered multifactorial. Many factors play a role in our actions, reasoning and moral outlooks. Consciousness and reason may well be aftereffects of our physiology and environment, but exactly how that plays out, the specifics of any causal patterns, and our ability to discern 11

John Lachs, ed., Animal Faith and Spiritual Life: Previously Unpublished and Uncollected Writings by George Santayana with Critical Essays on His Thought (New York: Meredith, 1967), 168.

290 Chapter 22 those patterns is not certain and may never be altogether clear. However, it is important to recognize that we are making progress in understanding the basis of human action and its aftereffects of consciousness, reason, belief and knowledge. In actuality, this could be an enlivening and enriching arena for philosophy. Describing and explicating our conscious life may well provide indices for what is occurring in our psyches and the world around us. Detailed analysis of our reasoning, beliefs and knowledge claims, may provide insights into our behavior not easily discernable in our physiology and lead to new discoveries and quandaries about human reasoning. This would provide new lines of collaboration with the sciences, but also with art and poetry. The celebrational aspect of consciousness that Santayana highlighted is missing in today’s accounts of human consciousness. That aspect may also provide significant insights into the meaning of human life as well as to its physiological and environmental foundations. So, does animal faith write the obituary for philosophy? I hope not, but it may well lead us down different exploratory and philosophical paths of discovery.

­c hapter 23

We Walk Back in Time to Go Forward In March 2013, I joined twenty-​four people on a tour led by Stockton University’s Holocaust Resource Center. Two Holocaust survivors were on the tour along with several second-​generation children of survivors. I had visited death camps before. This was different. The living history of the Holocaust resonated in every footstep. We visited the former home of one survivor; one colleague learned dramatic new aspects of his father’s imprisonment at Buchenwald, and throughout it all there was the darkness of a time we will never escape. An undertow of silence framed our walks through universities that endorsed the Nazi regime and through the Wannsee house where well-​educated persons planned the Final Solution. Yet, there was also a clear symphony of feelings that we can be better. I often thought of Santayana’s remarks: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,”1 and “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”2 I was asked to write about the tour, and these are my fragmented thoughts on this remarkable event in my life.

∵​

We walk back in time to go forward. Our gait fractured by the unspeakable, the unthinkable. Lived experience memories for two, close but second memories for others, new discoveries about a father for one, and all of us filled with images without voices, terror without sounds, emptiness without responses. Coming together, calling our numbers to assure we are all together, looking and finding and seeing the same and the different. Wondering what we would have done, been, and thought during such times. Our people, our community under siege, an enemy seeking the final solution. Data, statistics, numbers so easily entered, tattooed and calculated. Numbers without memories, without faces, without futures. Where are the persons, the children, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, grandparents, ancestors, future generations? All individuals. Grave sites, grave sights, barracks, barbed wire, watch towers, empty buildings, cold, snow, fallen leaves, “Fallen Leaves” with clanging horror, too much for some to walk over. 1 George Santayana, The : Introduction and Reason in Common Sense ((New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 12. 2 Ibid., 284.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_027

292 Chapter 23 What did we expect? Not this. Sounds without sound, thoughts without thought, sights without sight. All surrounded by the comfort of everyday life: good food, comfortable hotels, expert travel arrangements, expert guides, great care and attention to detail. Dachau with modern residences around it (how can one live there?), buildings going up, restaurants, bars, clubs, symphony, opera all continue as if deaf to the fallen, to our backward walk in time. Then the realization: we are out of step. All around us are going forward. Like Janus we have another face, one with a future, one with choice. We can choose to be different even if history is not on our side. We are in life camps, at home, office, college, everywhere. Our children and students are promises we make to a future we will not see. Perhaps there is little hope, leaves fall every year, holocausts and genocides are not dead and buried; they rise from the graves within all humans every year, every chance. But it is worth trying. We walk back, in time to go forward. I hope.

appendix 1

Multiculturalism as Plurality of Perfections Saatkamp’s Interpretation of Santayana Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. is an unconventional figure in the academic world. His life and achievements as such deserve separate consideration. My purpose here is much narrower. I limit my discussion to his reflections and interpretations of George Santayana, and this itself is a rich and interesting task. I will only address in passing only other considerations that are brought up in his other pieces. I will focus my writing on his œuvre that is directly involved with Santayana’s thought.

1

An Outline of Biography

Herman Saatkamp has dedicated almost all his philosophical life to the study of George Santayana. When we hear that a scholar dedicates his or her career to a classic figure, we usually understand that 1) he or she performs the following things: research, interpretation, a possible development or extension of said figure’s ideas, attempts in the popularization of the subject of investigation and active participation in the circle of scholars doing similar research. No less frequently, it may mean 2) an intellectual kinship resulting in the overlapping of some of his or her own ideas with the individual being studied. It could also mean 3) incorporating some ideas of this figure into one’s own worldview as if to see things, relations, and problems through the lens of that given philosophy or worldview. Sometimes, however, it also means 4) following the movements of the studied figure as regards the geographical locations and the personal contacts that the figure has had, be it family, adversaries, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, or partners in epistolary correspondence. Saatkamp has been engaged in all of these now for over fifty years, himself having a family and professional life very distinct from his intellectual hero.

1.1 Research

There are many details about Saatkamp’s research to be found in the present volume. It was in 1967, during the first year of his graduate studies at Vanderbilt University, when he met his mentor, John Lachs (1934-​) under whose supervision he completed (1972) his dissertation entitled “An Explication and Critical Examination of George Santayana’s Concept of Animal Faith.” The meeting of these two individuals has

© KRZYSZTOF PIOTR SKOWROŃSKI, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_028

294 Appendix 1 produced extraordinary results for Santayana scholarship. Lachs and Saatkamp are the most prominent living experts on Santayana. Despite the fact that their interpretations of Santayana sometimes do not overlap, their friendship and professional cooperation continue to this day; recently Saatkamp wrote an introduction to a volume about Lachs’s practical philosophy,1 and Lachs has written a foreword for the present volume. Herman was Lachs’s fourth doctoral dissertation graduate, out of a total of nearly seventy altogether,2 and has been most prolific in Santayanan scholarship, although, surprisingly, he has not authored any book. Apart from academic articles and his general introductory pieces on Santayana’s philosophy (“George Santayana” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example), he has been instrumental in preparing, editing, and publishing many volumes of the Critical Edition of The Works of George Santayana (The mit Press), in founding and developing The Santayana Society (serving as its President), along with its journal Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, and the Santayana Edition currently headquartered at Indiana University-​Purdue University, Indianapolis (iupui). He was the General Editor of the edition from 1977–​2003, when prior to moving to Indianapolis the edition was based at the University of Tampa (1977–​1985) and Texas A&M University (1985–​1998), finally arriving in Indianapolis (1998–​2003). He has co-​authored an extensive Santayana bibliography,3 and furthers the work by contributing to its updating right up to the present day in Overheard in Seville. In addition, he has been President of the Society of the Advancement of American Philosophy (saap) and The Association for Documentary Editing (ade).

1.2

Kinship and 1.3 Incorporation of Views

I take the abovementioned points 2 and 3 together since I am not sure if we can talk about Saatkamp incorporating many of Santayana’s ideas into his own worldview, but rather we should talk about a sort of intellectual kinship between the two. If the former, at least some of Santayana’s ideas have been adopted into Saatkamp’s own thinking. One of these would be his positive approach toward multiculturalism, about which I will write more in sub­chapter 3 in this essay. The other similarity would be Saatkamp’s growing reservations concerning the possibilities of having an impact on the course of events in the sociopolitical world. The ideas that appear to be in common between these two would be, among others:  individualism, humanism, naturalism, secularism, a non-​religious strain of spirituality, toleration, a celebration of life and

1 Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, ed., John Lachs’s Practical Philosophy (Leiden and Boston: Brill/​ Rodopi, 2018). 2 See Charles Padrón, “Comprehensive Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources,” ibid., 337–​39. 3 Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. and John Jones, eds., George Santayana: A Bibliographical Checklist, 1880–​1980 (Bowling Green, OH: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1982).

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Epicurean joyfulness, and the ongoing incrementation of a more fulfilling and enriching cultural life, internationally speaking. I will return to some these themes.

1.4

Following Santayana’s Steps

It must have been Saatkamp’s sense of fascination that pushed him to visit personally most of Santayana’s persons and places, using here terms that Santayana would have understood. Saatkamp received a grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities (neh) for the first time (1977), which greatly supported the process of editing Santayana’s works and was a strong motivation to travel and speak with people and visit libraries. Saatkamp’s poring over and collecting bibliographical materials did not only imply visiting the libraries that held Santayanan materials: Harvard, Columbia, the University of Texas, Princeton, the University of Virginia, the University of California-​Berkeley, the Jewish Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Salamanca, the city of Ávila and private collections there, and many other locations with a variety of collections. It also meant literally following the steps, the very movements of Santayana. For instance, in Rome, Saatkamp visited nearly all the sites and public spaces with which Santayana’s life was connected during his long stay in the Eternal City. His efforts of discovery bore fruit in meeting with a legion of people who had surrounded Santayana at various stages of his life, and during the process of the publication of his texts. Saatkamp was very eager to meet many of the people he was able to get contact with who were involved in any way with Santayana. A short list would include living members of Santayana’s family (both in the US and in Spain), his literary executrix (Margot Cory), scholars involved in maintaining some materials and items related to Santayana (e.g. Corliss Lamont), famous contemporary philosophers who appreciated, and even revered Santayana (e.g. Arthur Danto, Hilary Putnam), a scholar of the literary Santayana who eventually became the textual editor of the Critical Edition (William G. Holzberger), and many other leading Santayana specialists such as Richard Lyon, Joel Porte, Irving Singer, John McCormick, and Angus Kerr-​Lawson. It also included contacts with Santayana’s original publisher, Charles Scribner Jr. of Scribner’s, and a soldier who took Santayana’s manuscript from Rome to the US during wwii (Sergeant Freidenberg). For my part, I was very fortunate to witness Herman’s enthusiasm for the first time during my visiting scholarship at the Santayana Edition iupui (Indianapolis, in) in 2001/​2002, where he was the dean of the School of Liberal Arts. During that time he was the first mentor of my Kosciuszko Foundation project on Santayana (the second mentor, later on at Vanderbilt, was John Lachs). I  could experience firsthand Saatkamp’s passion combined with his competence, his lucid eloquence, not to mention his enormous generosity shown towards to me. This generosity included not only Santayana scholarship but also a willingness to introduce me to American academia, for which I am grateful to this day.

296 Appendix 1 2

Saatkamp’s Interpretation of Santayana’s Philosophy

Saatkamp has examined many aspects of Santayana’s philosophy in scholarly papers, introductory texts, biographical outlines, encyclopedic entries, lectures and talks, and presentations of various sorts. He has written and spoken in critical forums on Santayana and skepticism and naturalism, religion and spirituality, ethics and cosmopolitanism, American culture and sociopolitical issues, educational problems, and the role of philosophy at the present time.

2.1

Santayana as a Hispanic-​American Philosopher

Most American scholars see Santayana as an American philosopher, one who contributed to American philosophy and investigated American themes. For example, Henry Samuel Levinson, in his book entitled Santayana, Pragmatism, and the Spiritual Life, writes that Santayana’s “whole career bespoke preoccupation with the tensions of thought associated with the names of William James and Josiah Royce; his seventy-​ year-​long bibliography reverberates with Emersonian themes; one of his central philosophical concerns lay in giving a characterization of the nature of true virtue in aesthetic terms much like ones that Jonathan Edwards has used in the eighteen century to evade various theological controversies.”4 To take another telling example, John Lachs has always interpreted Santayana as an American philosopher and, frequently, as a pragmatist,5 “in certain respects a pragmatist,”6 a “proto-​pragmatist,”7 and a stoic pragmatist overall.8 Interestingly enough, some Spanish scholars have put Santayana in an almost exclusively Spanish context. For example, in his book El sustrato abulense de Jorge Santayana, Pedro García Martín presents the thesis that Santayana was American in his profession and in the language he used, but was an abulense, or someone hailing from Ávila (Abulensean, in English) in his essential nature and vocation; in other words, the claim is that he remained Spanish and Castilian by choice, and that he was American only due to circumstances over which he had not much influence.9 I myself have already expressed sympathy to some of the views presented in the book by writing, somewhat provocatively, about Santayana’s Abulensean pragmatism in order to show 4 Henry Samuel Levinson, Santayana, Pragmatism, and the Spiritual Life (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 20. 5 See John Lachs, A Community of Individuals (New York: Routledge, 2003), 155–​66. 6 John Lachs, Stoic Pragmatism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012), 62. 7 Ibid., 28. 8 See John Lachs’s Stoic Pragmatism, and his “Was Santayana a Stoic Pragmatist?,” in George Santayana at 150: International Interpretations (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 203–​07. 9 Pedro García Martín, El sustrato abulense de Jorge Santayana (Ávila: Institución “Gran Duque de Alba” de Ávila, 1989), 28.

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how incomplete are those interpretations that neglect these originary elements in Santayana’s work.10 One can find much support for the Spanishness of Santayana in many other Spanish scholars. José María Alonso Gamo defined his approach in the very title of his book: Un español en el mundo: Santayana, poesía y poética (A Spaniard in the World: Santayana, Poetry, and Poetics), as if establishing another extreme endpoint in Santayanan scholarship; that is, considering him, at least to some extent, as a part Spanish literary culture. Others, like Ramón Sender, include Santayana in the Generación del 98, Spain’s momentous literary and cultural movement with which he was to be intellectually and spiritually linked; being linked to a problematic Spain, to a Spain in temporary, if not permanent eclipse after its defeat in the Spanish-​American War and the loss of its overseas empire. To be true, there are some authors (Saatkamp himself in some instances) who vindicate the universal aspects of Santayana’s thought, as has David Dilworth, in claiming that Santayana “produced a text for all ages and cultures by realizing an essential possibility of thought.”11 This quote forces us to ask why should we nationalize (or de-​ nationalize) philosophy at all, and why we should treat some philosophical trends, problems, and individual figures as “American,” or “Spanish,” or “Hispanic,” or universal, especially in this time of globalization? Some may claim that a nation-​oriented approach in philosophy was perfectly justified during the nineteenth, and even the twentieth, centuries. During Santayana’s lifetime at least four wars took place that impacted his life intimately (the Spanish-​American War [1898], wwi, the Spanish Civil War [1936–​39], and wwii). He himself wrote extensively about German egotism, Spanish imagination, English liberty, and the American character, but does it make any sense to do it now? My response is the following, and I put it also in the context of contemporary revival of nationalism in many places, including my native country (Poland): We should not ignore a national background because a living philosophy manifests the deepest tendencies of a given national culture and a sense of cultural identity at a given level of its development. An example for such an approach, one among many others, is Santayana viewing pragmatism as an articulation of Americanism—​by the way, a similar view held by Josiah Royce and Richard Rorty.12 10 11 12

Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, “Angus Kerr Lawson, Abulensean Pragmatism, and the Problem of Values,” in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 45, (no. 4, 2009): 532–​40. David Dilworth, Philosophy in World Perspective: A Comparative Hermeneutic of the Major Theories (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 139. See Josiah Royce, The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce, ed. John J. McDermott (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 211 and 218; and Richard Rorty, “Amerykanizm i pragmatyzm [Americanism and Pragmatism],” in Filozofia amerykańska dziś [American Philosophy Today], eds. Tomasz Komendsziński and Andrzej Szahaj (Toruń: umk, 1999), 119–​44.

298 Appendix 1 I must confess that it was in the spirit of these and Saatkamp’s views that I  myself discussed Santayana’s output in “Santayana as an Hispanic-​American Philosopher: The National, International, and Transnational Perspective.”13 I took on that topic in the conviction, one that I still hold, that in the era of globalization and growing cross-​cultural encounters, meetings, and confrontations, Santayana can be a fruitful resource and a teaching exemplar for us to see how to convert cultural clashes into meaningful encounters. Here, I am sure, Saatkamp would agree. So what is Herman’s specific interpretation of this identified theme? He calls Santayana a “fin de siècle Hispanic-​American,”14 and “first and foremost,” an “Hispanic-​American philosopher.”15 He explores many of the possible aspects of Santayana’s involvement in American issues that evolved out of his early life as a Spaniard in puritanical New England, especially his insights into the academic context, the American capitalism of that period, and the cultural differences with the European tradition. Saatkamp even says that while discussing American themes Santayana, as an outsider, “presents views equal to Tocqueville in quality and importance,”16 and claims that his “Hispanic and Catholic background play a central role in his critique of American life” that render him “too bound by past traditions and obligations that are not understood or rooted in one’s own culture.”17 Indeed, like Alex de Tocqueville almost a hundred years earlier, Santayana views America from without, from a detached horizon, from a visitor’s perspective, and from a certain distance in order to give us some reflections, observations, and clues. Saatkamp also emphasizes that Santayana never relinquished his Spanish citizenship; Saatkamp evokes those fragments of his works in which Santayana openly wrote about his Latin, Mediterranean, Catholic, and Castilian roots as not many American commentators do. In “Santayana: Hispanic-​American Philosopher,” Saatkamp identifies the non-​American traits of Santayana’s philosophy: a sense of fate, celebration of life, humor, the imagination, and radical individualism. Allow me to say a few words

13

Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, “Santayana as an Hispanic-​American Philosopher:  The National, International, and Transnational Perspective.” The Inter-​American Journal of Philosophy, vol. 2, no. 2 (2011): 37–​49. 14 Herman J. Saatkamp, “Introduction,” in The Birth of Reason and Other Essays, ed. Daniel Cory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), xxiii. 15 Herman J. Saatkamp, “George Santayana, 1863–​1952,” in The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy, eds. Armen T.  Marssobian and John Ryder (Malden, MA:  Blackwell, 2004), 135. 16 Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. url: https://​plato.stanford.edu/​entries/​santayana. 17 Ibid.

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on the last of those, especially since Saatkamp understands it as an essential aspect of Santayana’s naturalism.18 Saatkamp suggests that Santayana’s individualism is, first and foremost, more radical than individualism represented by American philosophers, and, second, that it should be linked with his Spanish background. As to the first issue, indeed, all American pragmatists, classic or neo-​pragmatist, have looked at the idea of individualism in the context of a democratic society and loyalty to democratic principles so, from this viewpoint, there are some definite limits to the individualism they discuss. For example, individual imagination would be expected to have a pro-​social, communal dimension, and individual courage would be expected to respect public opinion. Saaktamp does in fact quote one of Santayana’s letters on this: “[T]‌he Spanish mind, in both hemispheres, is less subject than the Anglosaxon to the sense that he ought to swim with the stream.”19 Not only does Santayana evoke the limits of individualism in these respects; it is as if he confirms in his assessment what we know from John Lachs’s strong criticism of contemporary American intellectuals who tend to run with the crowd. Lachs even recommends that intellectuals’ engagement in public debate be mandatory given their lack of courage to do so.20 As to the second issue, which is the Spanish origin of this radical individualism, it would be interesting to seek a more objective confirmation of this claim. Indeed, we can find it in the characteristics of Spanish individualism put forward by Miguel de Unamuno, one of the most representative figures of the generation of Spaniards of that time and a key figure of the Generación del 98 movement. His own characterization looks identical with what Santayana (and Saatkamp) wrote about, yet its formulation looks unique enough to be worthy of citation: Only the hermit approaches the ideal of an individualistic life. I know a Spanish man of science who, nearing sixty, set himself to learn to ride a bicycle, and he told me that it was the most individualistic method of locomotion; to which I replied: “No, the individualistic way of locomotion is to walk alone, barefoot, where there are no roads.” In short, individualism is to live alone, naked, in the desert.21 18 19 20 21

See Herman J.  Saatkamp, “Santayana:  Hispanic-​American Philosopher,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, vol. xxxiv, no. 1 (Winter, 1998), 58. William G. Holzberger, The Letters of George Santayana, Book Eight, 1948–​1952 (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2008), 193. See John Lachs, “Intellectuals and Courage,” in A Community of Individuals (New York: Routledge, 2003), 8–​9. Miguel de Unamuno, “The Agony of Christianity and Essays on Faith,” trans. Anthony Kerrigan, in Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno, vol. 5 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 67.

300 Appendix 1 If Saatkamp is right in linking radical individualism with Santayana’s Spanish background, and he seems to be right on this, then, his linking radical individualism with Santayana’s naturalistic aesthetics (aesthetic subjectivism in the theory of beauty), ontology (theory of essence), and his un-​pragmatic approach to life (celebration of life rather than amelioration of social institutions) may also have some justification.22 As a result then, at this particular point, we would have a strong vindication of why Santayana scholars should consider talking about Santayana as a Spanish-​or Hispanic-​American philosopher in their discussions about the origin of his thought. This intercultural perspective gives Saatkamp a convenient and penetrating tool by means of which he analyzes critically Santayana’s strictly philosophical issues and also Saatkamp’s own native culture, via both humor and by concern.23 Much of this concern refers to the present condition of the institutions of higher education in the United States and their possible evolution in the future, as I discuss below.

2.2

The Condition of Academia

Saatkamp, in nearly all his numerous biographical texts on Santayana, signals out that Santayana’s decision to quit Harvard (1912), notwithstanding his established position, served as a point of no return in his adult life. He never returned to formal academia despite attractive offers subsequently. It is understood here that this case is very compelling for Saatkamp: to be hired by the most prestigious Western university was, and still is, a dream of the overwhelming majority of scholars if not the final goal of their careers, whereas Santayana had become fed up with it. Why? It is also clear why Saatkamp analyzes one of the principal reasons for this resignation, which is a willingness to be committed to an autonomous intellectual life. Does American academia indeed limit intellectual life?—​One could easily ask oneself in reading Saatkamp’s interpretation, such as a consideration of the following factor: “The general corporate and businesslike adaptation of universities was increasingly less conducive to intellectual development and growth.”24 I do not want to prejudge now if this view is fully justified; nevertheless, Saatkamp is quite right that Santayana’s plight during that period of educational reforms at Harvard, under the presidency of Charles Eliot, could be a poignant lesson for present discussions about the character of institutions of higher education. To be sure, Santayana did not devote any specific work to the sphere of education specifically and there is some justification in Lachs’s claim that Santayana did not contribute much to the philosophy of education,25 despite quite a number of scholars who have indicated 22 See Herman J. Saatkamp, “Santayana: Hispanic-​American Philosopher,” 58–​63. 23 Ibid., 54. 24 Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. url: https://​plato.stanford.edu/​entries/​santayana. 25 See John Lachs, Santayana (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988), 132.

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some significance in Santayana’s ideas in the area of education and the meaning of the liberal arts.26 Moreover, if we collected his scattered reflections on education into one bunch, they would seem to be a bit eclectic (yet coherent, at least in my view). However, he had a definite view on the role of the liberal arts in the contemporary world, and part of that view were his expectations from Harvard as a leading institution of higher education. His approach evolved from a positive to a negative one. In 1892 he claimed that Harvard offered a wide panorama of educational options that it could satisfy the various ambitions and expectations of the students there: “She therefore has not protective tariff on ideas; she believes that an impartial and scholarly survey of all the riches of nature and of history must make for good, morally as well as intellectually. This is her trust in truth, her motto Veritas.”27 It was only two years later, however, in 1894 (“The Spirit and Ideals of Harvard University”) that he characterized Harvard as scientific, complex, reserved, and deprived of a commanding thought or specific mission: “[I]‌t is the truth that is taught, but the truth without a capital letter,”28 and the “majority of the students are forlorn atoms, and their concourse is too fortuitous ever to make a world. It is impossible to have any affection or loyalty for such an aggregation, however excellent the instruction supplied to its constituent parts.”29 Many years later, in 1938, his opinion was even more critical: I happened to read the Harvard President’s Report not long ago. A terrible business. They multiply Schools and Courses and Departments for everything that anybody may fancy he wants to meddle with. A flux, a deluge, a drain of intellectual rubbish, the Cloaca Maxima of Liberalism. Still while it was the remnant of specific college life and Dickens-​like atmosphere that attached me to Harvard personally, it was the possibility of paddling one’s own canoe over that dirty official morass that was useful to my mind. It was a great opportunity for a man capable of autarchy (as they now call it) but not conductive to anything worth developing for society.30

26

See Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, Santayana and America: Values, Liberties, Responsibility (Newcastle:  Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2007), 29–​53; and “Santayana’s Philosophy of Education Against Fanaticism and Barbarity” in Charles Padrón and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, eds., The Life of Reason in An Age of Terrorism (Leiden and Boston:  Brill/​ Rodopi, 2018), 245–​59. 27 James Ballowe, ed. George Santayana’s America: Essays on Literature and Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 56. 28 Ibid., 58. 29 Ibid., 64. 30 William G.  Holzberger, ed. The Letters of George Santayana, Book Six, 1937–​ 1940 (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2004), 144.

302 Appendix 1 At the same time, we cannot forget that there were many reasons for Santayana’s decision. He wanted to be philosopher who developed his own system of thought rather than being merely a professor of philosophy who teaches his students. He opposed philosophical specialization into particular disciplines such as, for example, the separation of aesthetics from ethics. He received a proposition (1911) from his lifelong philosophical friend, Charles Augustus Strong, to stay in his newly obtained apartment in Paris; he felt economically secure without his university salary and emotionally more disconnected from his university after his mother’s death exactly in the year when he left Harvard; and he was quite dissatisfied with his university’s businesslike manner of operation. This last actuality seems crucial for Saatkamp. Santayana “was unwilling to serve on university committees and expressed concern about the aim of Harvard to produce muscular intellectuals to lead America as statesmen in business and government. Were not delight and celebration also a central aspect of education?”31 Saatkamp contrasts the business-​like intellectual formation of the then academia with a free-​minded aspect of a man-​of-​letters with a Spanish background who treated education as a lifelong humanistic project whose practical aim was to generate ideas. Why should we label “generating ideas” as practical and needed in the process of education at least in the liberal arts? Ideas should serve us to enrich life, make it more pregnant with meaning, with “delight and celebration,” and to explore the imagination as a source of a profound joy to be shared with others. And this is its practical meaning. We can say that all the excellent liberal arts education he gained in New England (Boston Latin School, Harvard) prepared him to play this role, and he was, luckily or not, a witness to the profound changes at Harvard enacted by the then authorities. Also, for Saatkamp, the professionalization of the humanities was at stake. He writes that Santayana quit Harvard “to become a full-​time writer and to escape the academic professionalism that nurtured a university overgrown with ‘thistles of trivial and narrow scholarship.’ ”32 And this remark provokes a specific, somewhat overarching question: Should universities, especially in the area of the liberal arts, become commercial in the sense of producing professionals for the labor market and administrations, or rather should they cultivate the traditional model of producing ideas independently of a market demand for those ideas? To put this in other words: Should education, especially university education be reduced merely to vocational preparation for commercial or administrative activities, as it began to at Harvard during Santayana’s day and as it takes place now in various places of the university world? Though this question must be left ultimately unanswered, Santayana offers a sort of proposal as to how to become 31

Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana, 1863–​1952,” The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy, 139. 32 Ibid., 141.

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“successful” in the contemporary world, one that uses the term “success” interchangeably with the term “happiness,” and this outline I develop below.

2.3

Progress and Success vs. Perfection

The problem of education, if seen from the perspective of what education ultimately should serve, brings us to the anthropological question of human development, personal self-​fulfillment, life goals, and the best way a given individual can thrive in society. The problem also refers to the development of social groups, not only individuals, since an individual cannot thrive independently of social arrangements and public institutions. The Western capitalist general formula measures the progress of human development, both in the individual and communal dimensions, with a commercial increase of products and the accumulation of material goods. Commonly, the measure is rendered by gdp; with a high gdp it would automatically imply a wide-​open access of goods to an individual and a high possibility of having a satisfactory life for people in general. But there are costs, and Saatkamp, thinking about his native country, one with the highest gdp in the world, through the lens of Santayana, indicates one of them: “Lacking the time to live in the mind, Americans use quantity as a justification for lack of quality in their achievements,”33 and adds pessimistically: “To rush through life and die without the joy of living, that is the tragedy of American life.”34 Also, with regards to the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism, meliorism or belief in progress, is one of its basic traits. It states that, in Charles Sanders Peirce’s formulation of it that “the world is neither the worst nor the best possible, but that it is capable of improvement.”35 The same is the case in John Dewey’s formulation (Reconstruction in Philosophy), that “the specific conditions which exist at one moment, be they comparatively bad or comparatively good, in any event may be bettered.”36 But in Saatkamp’s interpretation, Santayana’s pragmatism was very limited. On the one hand, “Pragmatism, as developed by Peirce and James, was an undercurrent in his naturalism, particularly as an approach to how we ascertain knowledge.”37 On the other hand, however, “the influence of the Harvard philosophers, particularly

33

Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. url: https://​plato.stanford.edu/​entries/​santayana. 34 Ibid. 35 Mats Bergman, “Improving Our Habits: Peirce and Meliorism,” in Cornelius de Waal and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, eds., The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 127. 36 John Dewey, “Reconstruction in Philosophy,” in The Middle Works, 1899–​1924, ed. Jo Ann Boydston, vol. 12, 1920 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 181–​82. 37 Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. url: https://​plato.standford.edu/​entries/​santayana.

304 Appendix 1 James and Royce is evident in Santayana’s thought, but he was hardly a mere follower and often advanced his philosophy more along European and Greek lines rather than the American tradition, which he thought was both too derivative and too tied to the advancement of business and capitalism.”38 Small wonder then, that Santayana’s understanding of progress was very different, and that he truly believed in the Aristotelian “perfections to be achieved,”39 or the process of “improvement or approach to perfection in some specific direction.”40 To quote Saatkamp’s own words: “Santayana’s philosophy rests on his materialism and on his humane and sympathetic appreciation for the excellence of each life.”41 Saatkamp understands this perfective dimension of progress in Santayana as aiming at a fuller, better, and more meaningful life. And these positive adjectives are necessary because we do not talk about any life being taken neutrally, nor about life having negative adjectives, as, for example, a life lived in an unreasonable, unordered, and unexamined way. We talk about the festive attitude towards the life that is lived well, and here resonates a Stoic approach that appreciated the good life, seeing a life as indifferent. The spirituality or the idea of the spiritual life that Santayana developed is instrumental in converting a life into a good life. As is self-​knowledge, “the extent to which one knows one’s interests, their complexity and centrality, will determine whether one can achieve a good life, provided the environment is accommodating.”42 Taking these words into account, progress does definitely take place when a given human being is able to command and navigate circumstances, be they technological, economic, cultural, political, and something else, in order to live a richer, better, fuller, and more beautiful life with some definite goal. Economic progress does not equal progress in human self-​realization, although it may contribute handsomely in making it possible. In Saatkamp’s words: “In Santayana’s approach, social life that does not enrich individual life has substituted means for ends, and having lost sight of its aim, becomes empty and worthless.”43 Again, Saatkamp delves back into Santayana’s Harvard years to show that the limitations imposed by American academia were impossible to bear for someone who had a different understanding about progress and success: “Harvard, the

38 Ibid. 39 George Santayana, Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 337. 40 George Santayana, “Apologia Pro Mente Sua,” in The Philosophy of George Santayana, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1940), 499. 41 Herman J.  Saatkamp, “Santayana:  Cosmopolitanism and the Spiritual Life,” in George Santayana at 150, 105. 42 Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. url: https://​plato.stanford.edu./​entries/​santayana. 43 Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana, 1863–​1952,” The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy, 147.

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foremost American academic center, was seen as ‘taken in’ by the promise of progress based on economic gains when, according to Santayana, one needed a central focus on the knowledge and understanding requisite for living well.”44 What is the difference between “living well” and having a successful life according to conventional standards? Santayana’s life can serve as an answer since he lived, by choice, a very modest life by economic standards, yet a supra-​active life in making it his own creation, according to his own nature, and having contributed to the humanistic and philosophical culture of the West. I assume that Saatkamp views Santayana as an exemplary successful figure both in terms of the good life and in public recognition; and concerning this latter aspect Saatkamp almost always brings it up in his biographical texts about Santayana: that Santayana was a best-​selling author, that his image appeared on the cover of the Time magazine (1936), that he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, that his books had financial success, that he had an epistolary relationship with countless eminent scholars, and so on. I also think that he admires that Santayana was able to ignore the at-​ that-​time intellectual fashions and public opinion, and that, notwithstanding, he was still successful by being fashionable and appreciated by the public. Saatkamp seems to hold Santayana as an exemplary model for an excellent life of its own sort. I say of “its sort” because Saatkamp would not expect this stance to be normative for other people and, specifically, for other philosophers. He would not, I suspect, agree with Lachs’s stoic pragmatist view that “philosophers ought to know better, speak better, and act better.”45 Instead, he writes that “Santayana counsels self-​knowledge, leading to a cultivation of the art of individualistic living. But Santayana never suggests only one model for human life, and he was careful to avoid suggesting that his life should serve as a model.”46

2.4

The Holocaust

There have been some critical voices (Pinkas, Skowroński)47 regarding Santayana’s silence about the Holocaust. It may seem strange that he devoted so much energy and time to criticize American culture, modern liberalism, the avant-​garde arts, and many

44 45 46 47

Herman J. Saatkamp, “Introduction,” The Birth of Reason & Other Essays, xviii. John Lachs, “The Obligations of Philosophers,” in Practicing Philosophy as Experiencing Life:  Essays on American Pragmatism, ed. Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński (Leiden and Boston: Brill/​Rodopi, 2015), 7. Herman J. Saatkamp, “Introduction,” The Birth of Reason & Other Essays, xxvii. See Daniel Pinkas, “Santayana, Judaism, and the Jews,” Overheard in Seville:  Bulletin of the Santayana Society, (no. 36, 2018), 69–​78; and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, “Santayana on the Holocaust and the Nazis,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, (no. 36, 1918), 60–​68. This last entry is an internet dialogue with a handful of participants.

306 Appendix 1 other issues of his time, yet did not criticize the Nazi atrocities during the Second World War. And this despite the fact that he had a convenient opportunity to do so given his voluminous book dedicated to sociopolitical philosophy, Dominations and Powers, which he was writing for decades and finally published in 1951. I exclude from consideration any editorial policy problems or censorship involved here, since we also encounter no condemnation of the Holocaust in his numerous letters either written during the war or immediately after it. In the indexes of the Critical Edition of his letters from that time period there is not a single mention of it. Before commenting on this in any way further, I would like to explain why this is an issue at all. In my view, if we want to seize upon some inspiration in Santayana as a humanist and a moral philosopher, it is very awkward not to have any words of his on the most sinister type of activity that humankind has ever witnessed. Additionally, there is a question on whether philosophers, such as Santayana among others, who aspire to comment on the most basic aspects of human life, should not be vocal about the most horrific events of the epoch in which they live? Since I think philosophers who speak out about social relations must not omit basic problems of the time they live, I had problems with understanding Santayana’s silence. At some point, I turned to Saatkamp’s interpretation of Santayana’s stance and I admit that what he has to say on this, although controversial, is very interesting and reaches the very basis of Santayana’s naturalism with its ambiguous consequences, ambiguous I mean from the point of view of moral philosophy. According to Saatkamp’s interpretations of Santayana’s naturalism then, wars, conflicts, and premature deaths are natural and unavoidable parts of the social life (and life in general) in which the interests, visions, and ambitions of autonomous agents, having too little space and too little time to realize them, inevitably clash. An honest and disillusioned philosophy should recognize it. The cost of lives is included in the economy of life described by means of naturalistic and biological terms, and it is only from the perspective of a present moment and the present (moral) interests of given social groups that some atrocities can be seen as the worst ever committed and enacted. The truth is, however, that cruelty is constantly repeated in many historical epochs and only because we lose sight of the old ones does not entail that we label the new ones the worst. The Nazi atrocities can be understood as essentially the next phase (however unspeakable and unpalatable) in a line of successive atrocities that some groups of people did to other groups of people, though technologically and logistically performed at a more advanced, sophisticatedly cruel level than it could have been possible in past ages. As alluded to, the scale of the evil differs due to a variety of factors, and the technical element as to how to kill others more efficiently is one of those factors. Since the Germans had more technical potentialities, that implicitly does not mean that the evil they performed was so far removed than the evil performed by those groups in the history of humankind that did not have such advanced tools to kill as,

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say, the gas chambers and the railways to quickly transport victims to those chambers. Hence, Saatkamp states, that although I find the lack of renunciation of the Holocaust tragic, I believe what Santayana would say is that from a naturalistic historical perspective, it could be seen as similar to other events in history. When the Christians recaptured Spain in 1492 and began the inquisition, the Jews were killed or removed from Spain, their graveyards were desecrated and tombstones turned into rubble (as in Nazi Germany and elsewhere).48 Saatkamp also quotes the letter written in 1943 in which Santayana admits to a sort of philosophical escapism from these terrible events: “Naturally the soul suffers when one hears of so many horrors, but at my age, knowing that I am useless, I console myself with my books and my philosophy, as if the present were ancient history.”49 Santayana’s naturalistic ethics, at least in the case of viewing wars and early deaths as unavoidable, provokes discussion as to the limits of human activity and the sense of attempts to make a difference. On the one hand, it looks very Stoic in its assumption that we do not have much influence on the course of events that take place in the world; that these events are physically or naturalistically determined anyway; and that the proper area for our fruitful activity is our attitude towards the external world rather than the external world itself. If so, his idea of the life of reason would be limited to particular persons that have the energy to console clashing tendencies within their own minds, but not to societies on the whole, since these are out of an individual’s control. Social events, wars, conflicts, the direction in which history moves, and so on, would all be parts of the world’s affairs which are independent of our effective intervention. On the other hand, however, there is some incentive to make the external world better by means of our activity, and it is precisely this dilemma that is the object of Saatkamp’s deliberation, as for example in “Santayana:  Culture and Creativity.”50 However, Saatkamp explicitly confirms that Santayana does not have many arguments to convince us to set to work in order to make the world a better place in which to live.51 He interprets Santayana, again, in fundamentally Stoic terms, suggesting that the most we can do in times of political turmoil is merely to be wise enough to find out our proper place in which we can best realize our interests without, however, entertaining

48

Herman J. Saatkamp, “Santayana on the Holocaust and the Nazis,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, (no. 36, 1918), 62. 49 Ibid. 50 This essay is in the current volume. 51 See Herman J. Saatkamp, “Santayana: Culture and Creativity,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society (no. 36, 1918), 84.

308 Appendix 1 much hope that we can change anything.52 Or even perhaps that there is a practical suggestion expressed metaphorically and in reference to what Santayana wrote (in Reason in Society); namely, that in difficult times “one must adapt as best one can, similar to adapting to the weather. … and seek a good life in a good climate.”53 Nor has the idea of the spiritual life any practical effect on the course of events, unless of course we, the agents who consider any given type of event from this or that perspective, reinterpret these events in a new way. Again, a Stoic and unpragmatic approach seems to guide the argument in social issues here. Daniel Pinkas, who has analyzed Santayana’s approach to Jews, has an interesting comment about Santayana’s spiritual life in the context of tragic events and about our possibilities to make a difference. Pinkas shares with us with his personal sense of the utter inhumanity of the spiritual stance as Santayana characterizes it. Or rather, by how utterly inhuman it would be, were it not for our animal/​human interests and preferences, and the intrinsically intermittent character of spiritual moments, factors that necessarily thwart the spiritual person’s ideal of perfect impartiality and absolute objectivity. Santayana not only fully recognizes this; he is, among modern philosophers, the one who best describes the multiple ways in which animal and spiritual lives entwine.54 Since Saatkamp would agree, I think, one could then ask if his position does not clash with Santayana’s given Saatkamp’s earlier involvement with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and later on?55 On the one hand, he talks about his hope for the betterment of social life in the United States, especially within the context of gender and race equality, along with his meetings with US Presidents or officials from their administrations. On the other hand, he talks about the deterioration of the present situation in the US, and of a haunting sense of impotence in making things right, concluding: “I must leave to others whatever changes may be in the offing for the U.S., Europe, and beyond, and perhaps I should do what Santayana did: observe it, but not participate.”56 One more remark should be considered—​I am not sure if Saatkamp discussed this—​and it deals with the perspective of someone who throughout his entire life was constantly hearing that a war had broken out. In at least four cases Santayana

52 Ibid., 86. 53 Herman J. Saatkamp, “The Life of Reason and Terrorism: Strategies,” in The Life of Reason in An Age of Terrorism, 23. 54 Daniel Pinkas, “Santayana, Judaism, and the Jews,” Overheard in Seville:  Bulletin of the Santayana Society, (no. 36, eir2018), 77–​78. 55 Herman J. Saatkamp, “Santayana on the Holocaust and the Nazis,” 62–​63. 56 Ibid., 63.

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witnessed the countries in which he lived and/​or was connected to, being at war. wwi and wwii were devastating, but also two others were devastating for his native Spain: the Spanish-​American War which more or less brought an end to the Spanish Empire that lasted for roughly four centuries, and also the Civil War from 1936 to 1939, in which Spaniards fought Spaniards at the end of which a repressive fascist dictatorship was established. From this perspective, the constant killing of innocent people—​ this group or that group against another group—​could be understood as something natural and unavoidable for Santayana. His way of understanding the world seems to manifest this. If I can agree that we practically cannot do much when we are confronted with such terrible events, I  would have to say that his philosophy is not completely impotent as far as social actions are concerned, and it provides us with some encouragement to think about what we could do in the long-​term continuum. The role of the liberal arts and education was mentioned above; below, I would like to discuss two more issues which are the celebration of life and, later on, something that we call today multiculturalism.

2.5

Celebration of Life

How is it possible to celebrate life after the Holocaust?—​a contemporary intellectual of any stripe or just any reasonable person could well ask. How could Santayana offer a philosophy of the celebration of life exactly at the same time of genocidal massive killings? We have already established a part of the answer to these questions in Saatkamp’s interpretations. And here is the remaining part: namely, the instability of the world, the cruelty of its moments, the predicament of life in general, and the seeming impotence in preventing any coming catastrophe make the celebration of particular moments even more significant. It makes “one’s mental remove from fate all the more vital and rich.”57 The term celebration may seem vague here, and I would very much like to extricate it out of the context of wars and social conflicts, of whatever sort. It has nothing to do with any copious consumption or the conventional celebrating of some socially important event, like New Year’s Eve. Nor does it suggest any ritualistic partying with numerous friends around, with much food and alcohol, as for any given birthday. Instead, it means the appreciation of given moments, events, and objects that are observed in daily life thanks to one’s vivid imagination. If one has, apart from a vivid imagination, a poetic sense of words, or a religious-​like sense of the mystery of the moment, or a photographic sense of a charming viewpoint to be assumed, it is possible to use them to impressionistically catch each and every scene and enjoy its uniqueness. Such

57

Herman J. Saatkamp, “Santayana: Hispanic-​American Philosopher,” 65.

310 Appendix 1 moments and events are usually ignored by most people, and the conventional way of celebration is the primary, if not the only, way to practice celebration for them. Santayana opposed this form of conventionalism in life both for the individual and the wider social congregation. The theme of celebration of life is not very often commented on by American authors, especially pragmatists, because, as I already have mentioned (2.3), the tradition of American pragmatism is dedicated to the amelioration of social life rather than its celebration. Therefore, Saatkamp’s following words do not come off as strange: “Santayana’s focus on and celebration of creative imagination in all human endeavors is one of his distinctive contributions to American thought.”58 I am not suggesting (nor does Saatkamp) that American society and American pragmatists are celebration-​free; however, it seems to me that celebration is connected with progress or, better yet, a success that has been achieved, not with what Santayana suggests, which is the wisdom to appreciate commonplace moments of ordinary life, with no special connection to what is normally considered as a success or a reason to celebrate. Sometimes, I have the feeling that Saatkamp, as a scholar of Santayana, as an American, and as an intellectual, perfectly embodies Richard Rorty’s description of the role of Santayana in contemporary America. According to this description, Santayana “was able to laugh at us [Americans] without despising us,” and “he saw us as one more great empire in the long parade. His genial hope was that we might enjoy the imperium while we held it.”59 I see Saatkamp himself as someone who tries to appreciate and enjoy what American culture can offer, and that is why, among other reasons, he appreciates Santayana’s sense of humor as something much more important than what others think it is. Indeed, Santayana’s celebratory approach has much to do with humor, and this is a strategy rather than a kind of an occasional expression regarding any one situation. Saatkamp even uses a sense of humor as an interpretative device in places that one does not expect, for example, in discussing the philosophical problem of skepticism. Specifically, in a discussion with Lachs about some aspects of Santayana’s Scepticism and Animal Faith he puts forward an alternative approach to the book: “This approach involves understanding Santayana’s sense of humor and his delight in upending philosophical inquiry. In other words, one should read the entire book with the sense of Santayana smiling over one’s shoulder and his delight if you catch on.”60 Although the 58 59 60

Herman J. Saatkamp, “Introduction,” in The Birth of Reason & Other Essays, xix. Richard Rorty, “Genteel Syntheses, Professional Analyses, Transcendentalist Culture,” in Two Centuries of Philosophy in America (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980), 228. Herman J. Saatkamp, “Is Animal Faith the End of Philosophy?,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society (no. 35, 2017), 11.

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seriousness of such an approach could be doubted, this goes far in explaining Saatkamp’s comment, in a longer and profounder analysis of Santayana’s skepticism (“Naturalism: Santayana and Strawson” in the present volume), about the futility of the philosophical and, especially, epistemological deliberations that hope to reach the truth. Hence, that festive element in Santayana is part of his view as is the claim that “there is no bedrock of certainty and likewise that there is no escape from skepticism through reason or experience. Skepticism-​establishing and skepticism-​rebutting arguments are equally idle and empty.”61 As already mentioned (2.2.), his interpretation of educational affairs looks quite different from other American commentators, especially when he follows Santayana in claiming the “delight and celebration” that enrich life should be an educational factor taken seriously into consideration. He is also different in moments when he sympathizes with Santayana’s claim about an elevated role of the liberal arts (including philosophy and the humanities). Primarily, it is the liberal arts that can offer the greatest possibility of cultivating the mind in the broadest sense, and, thus, resulting in creating a full, conscious as well as free, independent, and happy human being: “To be happy you must be wise,”62 (Santayana 1915, 152) we read in Santayana’s book written in reaction to the outbreak of wwi.

2.6

Multiculturalism, Global Citizenship, Cosmopolitanism

On some occasions, Saatkamp has referred to Hilary Putnam’s stating that Santayana was “far ahead of his time,”63 and one of the reasons that confirmed that claim is that “he [Santayana] appreciated multiple perfections before multiculturalism became an issue.”64 Unfortunately, he did not develop this idea in a separate place so my attempt here must be a sort of reconstruction of Saatkamp’s remarks. Furthermore, I have not been able to detect Saatkamp differentiating the term multiculturalism from the term cosmopolitanism, and his definition of the latter—​“a view that maintains two ideals: universal concern for all humans and respect for legitimate differences”65—​ may well be, in my view, a definition of the former. Even his definition of the idea of global citizenship—​“a global perspective that is sympathetic to all national and individual perspectives, a sympathy that nevertheless does not discount or discredit the value

61 62 63 64 65

This essay is in the current volume. George Santayana, Egotism in German Philosophy (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 152. Hilary Putnam, “Greetings to the Santayana’s Society’s Santayana Anniversary Celebration on Behalf of the Harvard Department of Philosophy,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, (no. 2, 1984), 24. Herman J. Saatkamp, “Introduction,” The Birth of Reason & Other Essays, xxxii. Herman J. Saatkamp, “Santayana: Cosmopolitanism and the Spiritual Life,” 97.

312 Appendix 1 of one’s own perspective and culture”66—​and the ways to achieve it—​“for Santayana, this global perspective, this world citizenship, is possible if one recognizes the natural basis of all life, the multiplicity of values for all living beings, and the integrity of each individual life including one’s own”67—​seem to me about the same topic. A confirmation of this I find in his defining global citizenship in this way: “Integral to Santayana’s world citizenship is his respect for the multiplicity of human (and animal) interests suited not only for survival but for living well in one’s lifetime.”68 I am using all of these insights in order to interpret Santayana’s idea of the pluralism of perfections in the context of what we today call multiculturalism—​a term that Santayana never used. I find Saatkamp helpful in conceiving the idea of multiculturalism as plurality of perfections in a few places, given his own interest in international and global affairs, in cultural matters and education. I dedicate a bit more attention, in a separate subchapter below, to this idea with the conviction that this reconstruction may very well serve us in our present public discussions about multiculturalism, and allowing us to think about a contribution to this discussion that can be considered as one from a Santayanan perspective. Santayana wanted to address the problem of what to do in the face of a clash of cultures; how an individual could evaluate different cultures in any given situation in which he or she should happen to be in. Santayana’s idea of the life of reason suggests a possible harmonization of conflicting tendencies; and hence, a sort of neutrality would be required as a prerequisite or the starting point for a cultural assessment that would allow us to better appreciate other cultures without disowning ours. To sum up, the three specific reasons why I locate these comments in a separate subchapter are: their importance for contemporary discussions about multiculturalism; Santayana’s possible original contribution to the theme; and Saatkamp’s highlighting some important points.

3

Plurality of Perfections as the Main Idea for Santayana’s Multiculturalism

3.1 Meaning

It is Saatkamp’s constantly returning theme that Santayana’s philosophy is not just a static relic from the history of philosophy, and that there is a vital message to the 66

Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana:  World Citizen,” in Santayana:  Un Pensador Universal, eds. José Beltrán, Manuel Garrido, and Sergio Sevilla (Valencia: Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-​americans, 2011), 21. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid., 34.

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contemporary reader who is preoccupied with the present sociopolitical and cultural condition of the West: “[T]‌here are some similarities to our own time when the rise of populism and nationalism appear to be on the increase.”69 As already mentioned (2.1), Santayana had dealt with various forms of attitudes that elevated one’s own culture as better than others, if not the best, and these include American exceptionalism, the Jewish idea of Chosen People, the Catholic conviction of having the Truth, the German Volk’s sense of destiny, and Spanish Imperial thinking, are some of those he had to deal with. On another note, it is also my hope that Santayana’s philosophy can be inspirational for contemporary readers. Especially in his encounter with American culture, a much more expansive one than his native Spain. It did not, I stress, imply intellectual subjugation for him personally but rather resulted in his own enrichment and his enormous contribution to both of those cultures.70 (Skowroński 2003b).

3.2 Origins

Santayana’s multiculturalism had its roots in the cosmopolitanism of his family, and this fact Saatkamp discusses in almost all of his biographical texts devoted to Santayana. The far-​ranging geographical regions that come together to form his familial history since the nineteenth century are Spain (Castilla and Cataluña), the Philippines, the USA (Virginia, New England), and Scotland. Santayana’s constant travels strengthened his cosmopolitan background, and his knowledge of the cultural hallmarks, philosophical works, and literary creations solidified even further his understanding. Saatkamp repeatedly returns to Santayana’s Spanish-​American heritage that served as a basis for his reservations about the first symptoms of Americanization, claiming that Santayana’s “ ‘Latin’ perspective raised suspicion toward forcing Anglo-​Saxon economic and political outlooks on other cultures.”71 We cannot forget the context of the Spanish-​ American war, already mentioned (2.1.). Santayana must have felt very intensely the impotence of the old, aristocratic Spain in its conflict against the young and vital USA that destroyed its illusions and showed its imperial weaknesses. We can interpret it as a sort of cultural shock he had to deal with.

3.3 Experience

Saatkamp stresses the practical, not merely bookish, character of Santayana’s approach toward the best achievements of various cultures by bringing these into play in his discussions. The most important one, the first trip to the United States in 1872, 69 Herman J.  Saatkamp, “The Delight of the Critical edition of Reason in Society,” Limbo: Boletín internacional de estudios sobre Santayana, (no. 17, 2017), 40. 70 See Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, “Santayana Read from A  Perspective of Polish Post-​ Communism,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society (no. 21, 2003). 71 Herman J. Saatkamp, “Santayana: Hispanic-​American Philosopher,” 60.

314 Appendix 1 allowed him to experience the cultural clash in different dimensions, and in very many instances in Santayana’s work we read about it. Saatkamp describes this first cultural confrontation between Santayana’s native Spanish Catholic culture with that of New England’s Protestant culture by juxtaposing these two in the following way. Valuing arts for their beauty and relevance to the quality of life versus aesthetics seen as serving a purpose for the ongoing rush of everyday life. Assessing religion as a poetic achievement to be celebrated versus utilizing religion as a mode of science, industry, and charity. Seeing education as an area of delight versus education as preparation for employment. Approaching life as festivity and celebration versus human existence as a set of tasks that ameliorate social life. Understanding science and knowledge as important yet limited versus belief that science is omnipotent and knowledge is the foundation of living well.72 No less significant were Santayana’s successive travels, most of which were not of a touristic, commercial, or pleasurable character, as is the case today with travel in general. And those odysseys and excursions contributed to the development of his attitude substantially, for “his travels led to first-​hand experiences of the many human excellences possible in many different society orders and to his realization of what was possible for his own personal life of reason.”73

3.4

The Precondition

At least partial neutrality in perceiving other cultures is a necessary precondition for the idea of multiculturalism. Saatkamp claims: “Within the natural order every living entity stands on the same natural ground bathing equally in the impartial light of nature. No one can claim a central place above others.”74 It is quite impossible to hold multiculturalist views and, at the same time hold chauvinistic or strongly biased views about one’s own culture. And this was one of the reasons for Santayana’s criticism of the liberal democracy he witnessed in the United States. American democracy with its optimism and hope for nationwide cooperation is, according to Santayana, based upon the theoretically fragile and practically unconfirmed assumption that, at the very bottom, everyone—​including Native Americans, Puritans, Republicans, Democrats, Catholics, Orthodox Muslims, businessmen, Communists, or hippies—​wants the same thing. In his understanding, the field for the realization of human nature(s) in the US has been reduced to the realizations of different variants of only one type of human development, one type of aims and standards, that is, those leading to material prosperity. 72 Ibid., 57. 73 Herman J. Saatkamp, “The Delight of the Critical Edition of Reason in Society,” 44. 74 Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. url: https://​plato.stanford.edu/​entries/​santayana.

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Probably here lies the bone of contention surrounding present discussions about most contemporary populism and nationalism. The opponents to multiculturalism claim that such cultural neutrality is either impossible in practice or absurd in its core because not everybody wants the same. I mean the representatives of various cultures do not want the same thing and in this lies the difference among those cultures. Hence, why one should even try to be unbiased given the fact that his or her heritage comes out of a given culture, which is also his or her basic source for having a sense of identity, patriotism, and belonging? Exactly this point, I think, is taken as a given in present discussions about the role of the European Union in some member-​countries (Poland, Hungary, for xexample) whose independence had been at risk for a long time during their tragic history.

3.5 Idea

In Saatkamp’s remarks about the critical edition of Reason in Society, he indicates that Santayana “clearly moves to appreciate the many types of human excellence.”75 The question rears its head as the following: Do we talk about the excellence of the individual life only, or also about the excellence of the communal life? Santayana’s focus on radical individualism was already discussed above (2.1.), while the idea of multiculturalism refers to cultures as forms of collective life rather than of the individual. Saatkamp clarifies this doubt by bringing into play such fragments in Santayana’s texts that mention that the individual is not an anarchic, isolated and/​or egoistic entity, but rather an agent who, in order to thrive, must be loyal to one cultural heritage without being determined by this heritage: “Meanwhile, we can refine our own lives at home, according to our several traditions.”76

3.5.1

The Original Formulation

Amongst Santayana’s tersest formulations of the idea, we find this one: “But human virtues and human forms of society had various natural models, according to differences of nature or of circumstances. Virtue, like health, has different shades according to race, sex, age, and personal endowment. In each phase of life and art a different perfection may be approached.”77 This view corresponds to his view expressed in this quote: “I see no reason to deny that different races, epochs, and climates might develop different regimes with equal success and without mutual recrimination, if only they

75 76

Herman J. Saatkamp, “The Delight of the Critical Edition of Reason in Society,” 41. William G.  Holzberger, ed., The Letters of George Santayana, Book Seven, 1941–​1947 (Cambridge: The mit Press, 2006), 301. 77 George Santayana, Dominations and Powers:  Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government, 337.

316 Appendix 1 understood the place of their respected virtues in the universe, and did not attempt to legislate, on their particular principles, for all men and for all ages.”78 In the quote that follows, attention is paid to the moral and social costs of elevating a given form of culture to the level of perfection. The social cost seems to be one of the basic measures by which some cultures can be appreciated and others punished: “If any community can become and wishes to become communistic or democratic or anarchical I wish it joy from the bottom of my heart. I have only two qualms in this case: whether such ideals are realisable, and whether those who pursue them fancy them to be exclusively and universally right: an illusion pregnant with injustice, oppression, and war.”79 As to the ways in which Santayana can be helpful in teaching us the practical aspects of cultivating this stance, it would behoove us to return to Santayana’s philosophy of travel. As already mentioned (3.3.), traveling in Santayana’s meaning of the term has nothing to do with the massive tourism of the present day and means, among other things, an attempt “to overcome moral and ideal provinciality, and to see that every form of life had its own perfection, which it was stupid and cruel to condemn for differing from some other form, by chance one’s own.”80 More importantly, we can assume a more serious stance as in attempts to struggle against various forms of prejudice: social, religious, cultural, and others. The respect for a deep wisdom of the past cannot be limited exclusively to our wisdom; thus, for the humanist or philosopher or just an unprejudiced person “there is no more reason for swearing by the letter of the Gospels than that of Homer or the Upanishads or the Koran. We may prefer the spirit in one or another, but the moral beauty in them all is equally natural, equally human.”81

3.6 Values

Since the term perfection has much to do with values in the sense of being the highest or the best, or the most excellent or the most valuable stage of a given good, excellence or beauty, we should, I think, move along the axiological dimension of the idea itself.82 There are even Santayana scholars who claim that “his whole philosophy is a theory of 78

Hugh J.  Dawson, “America and the West at Mid-​Century:  An Unpublished Santayana Essay on the Philosophy of Enrico Castelli,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, (vol. 17, 1979), 454. 79 George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography (Cambridge: The mit Press, 1986), 227. 80 Ibid., 170. 81 George Santayana, The Idea of Christ in the Gospels or God in Man (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946), 5. 82 See Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, “Axiocentrism in Santayana and Elzenberg,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. xxxix (no. 2, 2003).

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value, or rather an attitude distributing values among other things.”83 Saatkamp goes on to write that “each entity also has an embodied set of values, and the art of life is to structure one’s environment in such a fashion as to best realize those embodied values, i.e., to place in harmony the natural forces of one’s life and one’s environment.”84 The same interpretative emphasis is stressed by John Lachs’s who has developed Santayana’s original version into even more of a general claim: Values are prime determinants of behavior and central targets of alien attack. To group individuals by what they treasure is, therefore, of great epistemic and moral utility. Instead of being inapplicable to globalized society, as is the notion of cultural species, it captures the very heart of the modern world, adding to our grasp of why people act as they do while providing a spur to act in a way that is morally better.85

3.7 Relativism

The reference to values generates discussions about the relativity of them, something that in our current day and age we call cultural relativism or relativity in morals. Santayana was not a Platonist in claiming that some values—​the good and the beautiful—​ are absolute; instead, his definition of the term values embraces relativism: “Value is something relative, a dignity which anything may acquire in view of the benefit or satisfaction, which it brings to some living being.”86 It was in the spirit of this understanding of values that he admired, while in Greece, “the courage and the dignity with which the Dorians recognized their place in nature, and filled it to perfection.”87 It should be noted, however, that this definition of value is ambiguous. On the one hand, Santayana talks about the relative status of values and subjective satisfaction, and, on the other, he writes about dignity as something central, which reminds of the Stoics’ idea of dignitas and of Kant’s (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals) reference to moral values as embodying dignity, both concepts not relative at all. Further still, on some occasions he also uses a non-​relativistic narrative, like in the

83 84 85 86 87

Stephen Pepper, “Santayana’s Theory of Value,” in The Philosophy of George Santayana, 219. Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. url: https://​plato.stanford.edu/​entries/​santayana. John Lachs, A Community of Individuals, 56–​57. George Santayana, Platonism and the Spiritual Life (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), 3. George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, 453.

318 Appendix 1 following: “Anything good intrinsically, anything loved for its own sake, is its own standard, and sufficient as it is.”88 I write about relativism because multiculturalism is, at least if we consider its multi component for a moment, somehow related to relativism. To clarify, the relativism that is at stake here, in Saatkamp’s formulation, means that “one may recognize that every form of the good has its own perfection, and one may respect that perfection.”89 One of the questions that arises here is this: Is it possible to hold such a philosophical stance in practice? Is relativism realizable? How can we respect clashing hierarchies of values while thinking at the same time they are equally worthy? To such questions, put forward explicitly in the context of Lachs’s relativism (Lachs followed Santayana on this), Saatkamp answers on a positive note, adding that it is possible “so long as the relativist does so recognizing he is speaking from a particular perspective and is inviting those with similar interests and proclivities to join in.”90 In my view, one could easily call such a philosophical position perspectivism rather than relativism, and I suspect Saatkamp would not have anything against it given claims such as this: “But all perspectives on truth and the good have their own standing in the world. None is more privileged than another, except as one may lead to more successful action than another depending on the needs and desires of the animal.”91 Yet, perspectivism is something distinct from relativism, since in holding the former we still can keep a common axiological measure by means of which we deal with various perspectives meanwhile in relativism, we cannot keep the same measure—​perfection in this case—​as applicable to different cultures. It is because the phrase different cultures should embrace different scales of perfection, native to these very cultures, and, even more, should embrace different tools, not one (perfection), to measure their worth, goals, and development according to their (cultures’) own way of measurement. There is one more objection. Even if we assume relativism to be a justified stance, we realize that promotion of such a stance does not take place without costs, and one of those costs would be a sense of instability in one’s picture of the world. I am not talking only about individual disorientation, but about a lack of public recognition of which traditions, cultures, and customs realize perfections and which are degenerate forms and lead to collapse. For example, I can imagine that recent isis fighters (terrorists?) believed that they would restore and create perfect a Caliphate along with the restoration of the medieval customs of the past Caliphate and with the “modernization” of institutions, the justice system, the education system, etc., that somehow 88 89 90 91

James Ballowe, ed., George Santayana’s America: Essays on Literature and Culture, 174. Herman J. Saatkamp, “George Santayana: World Citizen,” 34. Herman J. Saatkamp, “Introduction,” in John Lachs’s Practical Philosophy, xxii. Herman J.  Saatkamp, “George Santayana:  1863–​1952,” The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy, 146.

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would maintain its purity. Saatkamp’s reply would probably be that there is no one good for every culture and they must clash at some points; the art of the life of reason is to harmonize, if possible, these clashes and transform them into a mutual benefit and the avoidance of social costs according to Santayana’s statement quoted in 3.5.1.

3.8 Controversies

Whether this is a completely utopian vision on the whole or not is open to discussion. Its most vulnerable parts seem to be the problem of relativism, the question of agency (how can radical individualism be coupled with the agency of social groups and their cultures?), and neutrality as a precondition, and have I discussed them briefly above. Saatkamp at various places of his literary output has suggested some interesting points, probably many more than discussed in this text. But I would like to highlight the problem that can be seen as the most controversial one here, and that is the manner of the implementation of the idea. Neither Santayana nor Saatkamp claims anything about an institutionalized way of applying the idea, nor does Santayana offer any technical details as to how to impact political life in order to make the idea recognized and appreciated. I suspect, however, that the main tool for promoting it would be the area of liberal arts and education. As already mentioned (2.4), Santayana believed that conflicts and wars were something natural, yet he also believed that it is no less natural for most people is to live and thrive without conflicts and wars. His ideas of the life of reason and the pluralism of perfections recognize the efforts that aim at the cultivation and harmonization of divergent tendencies, and view them as loftier than the opposite (also naturalistic) tendencies to conquer and dominate. Let me repeat, it is by means of education, the liberal arts, philosophy, and the humanities that those ideas can be discussed and promoted, if at all.

4

Conclusion: Saatkamp’s Main Contribution to Santayana Scholarship

In this final part of my text I would like to conclude by saying that the biggest contribution to Santayana scholarship, at least in my view, is something that is perhaps more important than Saatkamp’s own extraordinary editing work and other efforts connected with the publication and reediting of Santayana’s philosophical and literary output, something that I indicated above (1.1, 1.4). Much more significant would be in using each and every opportunity in our lives to show how Santayana’s philosophy is a living body of thought. It is living because it can be stimulating despite the course of time, despite the historical context, and despite the philosophical traditions that new Santayana scholars emerge from. Only partially, I think, would Saatkamp agree with Bertrand Russell who wrote that “Santayana, like Spinoza, is to be read not so

320 Appendix 1 much on account of his theoretic doctrines, as on account of his view as to what constitutes the good life, and of his standard of values in art and in morals.”92 Saatkamp would think this claim definitely too narrow, and his interpretations show how much he extends the meaning of this philosophy. In this way, Saatkamp makes Santayana’s thought much vaster than a set of philosophical ideas to be discussed (or rather criticized) by other professional philosophers. He lets us know that it can function well as a lay religion that offers answers, at least in an outline, to nearly all the basic questions that a thinking human being may ask. 92

Bertrand Russell, “The Philosophy of Santayana,” in The Philosophy of George Santayana, ed. Paul Schilpp, 453–​54.

appendix 2

Santayana’s Delight in Living A Response to Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński Herman J. Saatkamp  Jr. I am grateful to Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński for his account of my work and its importance. Although he and I disagree about various interpretations of Santayana and the legacy of Santayana’s work, I find that respectful disagreement is one of the achievements of scholarship and an essential requirement for honest inquiries. My response to Skowroński’s critique is divided into two parts. First. I emphasize the sweeping power of Santayana’s thought for our contemporary world—​a point most often missed by readers and even Santayana scholars, and second, I clarify some of the language and concepts Skowroński mentions.

1

The Significance of Santayana

My greatest concern regarding Santayana scholarship is that his major achievements are overlooked. So, I wish to emphasize these as I find them in his letters, publications and interviews. The wide-​ranging impact of Santayana’s philosophy on the contemporary scene is in three areas: (1) a thoroughgoing naturalism or materialism, (2) a festive celebration of life, and (2) a humane view of others.

1.1

Naturalism/​Materialism

Santayana’s materialism or naturalism gives a cold shoulder to human concerns and predicaments and some scholars and readers, in turn, give it a cold shoulder as well. Yet, this is one of his major achievements. Neutrality is the foundation for modern scientific research and discovery. One should look at natural causes for what they are, not for what we think they are or for what we wish they were. Developing such an approach is not easy and certainly not entirely possible given our specific circumstances and abilities. There are many historical episodes showing that such neutrality is breached when one is researching the causes of events having major impacts on humanity or when one may be finding results that counter previously held views. Even so, it is important to note that Santayana was a forerunner of understanding the universe through scientific means.

© Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004446656_029

322 Appendix 2 Hilary Putnam writes that Santayana may have had less attention from his death until the 1980s because “his philosophical mood and philosophical intuitions were actually ahead of his time.”1 And they were, but how? His thoroughgoing materialism is one of Santayana’s major contributions. He often uses the terms materialism and naturalism interchangeably. He even noted his acceptance of Marx’s material conditions while denying Marx and Hegel’s beliefs in any inherent, progressive historical development in these material conditions. In the Preface to Scepticism and Animal Faith, he writes with obvious irony and humor that he is perhaps the only materialist living: Moreover, my system, save in the mocking literary sense of the word, is not metaphysical. … Now in natural philosophy I am a decided materialist—​apparently the only one living; and I am well aware that idealists are fond of calling materialism, too, metaphysics, in rather an angry tone, so as to cast discredit upon it by assimilating it to their own systems. But my materialism, for all that, is not metaphysical. I do not profess to know what matter is in itself, and feel no confidence in the divination of those esprits forts who, leading a life of vice, thought the universe must be composed of nothing but dice and billiard-​balls. I wait for the men of science to tell me what matter is, in so far as they can discover it, and am not at all surprised or troubled at the abstractness and vagueness of their ultimate conceptions: how should our notions of things so remote from the scale and scope of our senses be anything but schematic? But whatever matter may be, I call it matter boldly, as I call my acquaintances Smith and Jones without knowing their secrets: whatever it may be, it must present the aspects and undergo the motions of the gross objects that fill the world:  and if belief in the existence of hidden parts and movements in nature be metaphysics, then the kitchen-​maid is a metaphysician whenever she peels a potato.2 As a thoroughgoing naturalist, Santayana understands the material world to be the causal structures within nature. The physical causes of all that happens in the universe is subject to scientific investigation, and we must wait and see what explanations science discovers while recognizing that all explanations are approximate knowledge based on the current evidence that may change over time and with the development of new methods and technologies. Even so, one understands that humans are merely

1 Hilary Putnam, Santayana Restored (Cambridge: The mit Press, 1985). This is a brochure for the critical edition of Persons and Places. 2 Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy (New York, Scribner’s; London: Constable, 1923), vii-​viii.

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one living structure within the universe, and the material base of the universe is as neutral to human development as it is to any other living or non-​living entity. As individuals, we are like one grain of sand in the desert of the universe, temporarily placed in a material universe, in a location limiting our understanding, and temporarily present in a universe that has been here much longer than humans and will be here far beyond our short existence. The material universe is like the underlying molten lava shaping events on the surface of the earth, largely unnoticed and unappreciated until a volcano erupts, or the floating continents cause noticeable changes. Our physical being interacts with the material makeup of our surroundings, and we are largely unaware of this until its presence interferes with our normal activities. We move forward thinking we direct our actions with intent and understanding, but it is the underlying physical causes that generate our awareness of any intent or purpose. This awareness is secondary to the physical causes and does not cause our actions. Some have suggested Santayana is an epiphenomenalist, as I did in my earlier writing. But Santayana did not think the classification was accurate. Epiphenomenalism suggests that consciousness is an entity generated by physical causes. For Santayana, the only entities are physical, and awareness or consciousness is not physical and in modern terms is perhaps best understood as a general characteristic of certain neuron interactions, possibly like the temperature of the body that is not located in any place. In 1913 Santayana writes to Horace Kallen: Therefore I am no epiphenomenalist, but a naturalist pure and simple, recognizing a material world, not a phenomenon but a substance, and a mental life struck off from it in its operation, like a spark from the flint and steel, having no other substance than that material world, but having a distinct existence of its own (as it is emitted continually out of bodily life as music is emitted from an instrument) and having a very different kind of being, since it is immaterial and moral and cognitive.3 If that were the long and short of Santayana’s philosophy, then the appropriate attitude might well be to accept it as the icy truth while adopting a thoroughgoing Stoic acceptance of human impotence in a world of underlying, unconscious causes. Although there are Stoic aspects to Santayana’s outlook, that is not all there is. He maintains one should develop a festive celebration of life.

3 George Santayana to Horace Meyer Kallen, 7 April 1913, The Letters of George Santayana Book Two: 1910–​20, Edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. (Cambridge, MA and London, England: The mit Press, 2002), 127.

324 Appendix 2 1.2

Celebration of Life, Consciousness, Spirit, Spiritual Life

Santayana developed his view of consciousness, or spirit as he calls it, as an aftereffect of material causes ahead of scientific evidence. In Chapter Twenty-​Two, “Is Animal Faith the End of Philosophy?,” I refer to recent research maintaining a view like that of Santayana. Stephen Hawking, for example, makes such a declaration, citing neurologist Ben Libet of the University of California, San Francisco, who found that the brain’s processes occur nearly half a second before a person consciously decides to begin an action. In other words, there are action-​specific electrical activities in the brain that precede any awareness of a decision being made to act. Consciousness, thought, reason are aftereffects of physical activities that precede them.4 Santayana was significantly ahead of his time. What is missing in contemporary neurophysiological explanations is a singularly important element that Santayana highlighted. Conscious life is not only an aftereffect of physical interactions, it is celebrational. Consciousness is the art, poetry and music of the human psyche (our physical being). It often is momentary as when a fragrance ushers back wonderful memories of times past, or it can be lengthy as when one is totally enveloped in symphonic music. Either way, it is temporary as one must get back to living, to eating, to action. Instead of being rational agents, we, like all animals, are decision makers and our decisions are revealed in our actions. These fragmented conscious moments, if cultivated, are a delight. For Santayana, developing a life that fosters such moments is the spiritual life, temporary, non-​causal, but eternal in the moment of celebration and delight. One aspect I have not emphasized enough is that as one grows older Santayana’s celebrational consciousness becomes more apparent. As one’s roles in business, parenting, universities, government, and social life are reduced, and sometimes one is more an observer than a participant, then the delight of consciousness may become more apparent. Waking up and looking out across a valley to hills and mountains may be an image one carries for the day or simply is enthralled with it at the moment. Cultivating this festive consciousness in one’s last years gives delight that is not diminished by the decline of one’s health or the growing isolation of age.5 Santayana cultivated his

4 Robert A. Burton, “The Life of Meaning (Reason not Required),” New York Times, Sept. 5, 2016. 5 Unfortunately, this consciousness may also become less than celebrational as when dementia sets in and one’s consciousness is limited and sometimes images and fragments of the worse part of life come forward. Even in this tragic stage, I have seen people whose memories of parents and children flood them with joy and give delight even in the most debilitating circumstances.

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spiritual life from an early age until his death. Something, I believe, should be admired as a unique contribution to the spiritual life for all human beings.

1.3 Humane

Santayana maintains there are two questions regarding the work of any philosopher. First, is she or he a naturalist allowing science to determine the causes of all events including human actions, or is she or he superstitious and confused on this subject. And second, “how humane and representative is his sense for the good, and how far, by his disposition or sympathetic intelligence, does he appreciate all the types of excellence toward which life may be directed?”6 Santayana’s sense of humanity is found in his younger years through his friendships, his having several Jewish students with other socialist progressive students meet in his room on the Harvard Yard when Jewish students lived in a separate dorm and were considered “different,” in his long-​standing friendships with many individuals whose outlook and ideals were quite different from his, and his care and concern for Daniel Cory and his wife and their financial and personal needs. One often overlooked but important aspect of Santayana’s humanity is his response to wwi. Stranded in England and not wanting to return to the U.S., he turned to his unfinished philosophical work, particularly the Realms of Being and some notes for Dominations and Powers. At first, true to his naturalism, he developed a somewhat neutral view toward the war recognizing that wars are a natural aspect of governments. However, seeing the orphans, the bombings, and the dead and wounded soldiers return from the war, he instead set aside his unfinished philosophical works and authored a rather partisan Egotism in German Philosophy (1915), began giving addresses on his American experiences found in Character and Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America (1920), and wrote some of his best poetry. He had largely abandoned poetry in the early 1900s. However, during wwi he wrote three poems that are among his best: “To a Friend Imprisoned in Germany,” “To a Pacifist Friend,” and “The Undergraduate Killed in Battle.” The last was included in Edith Wharton’s 1915 The Book of the Homeless. This was Wharton’s effort to raise money for American Hostels and the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee. “To a Pacifist Friend” was most likely written for Bertrand Russell in 1916 when Russell was removed from his academic post at Trinity College, Cambridge because of his pacifism. All three of these poems represent a depth and skill in poetry that surpasses his previous efforts. From my perspective, Santayana meets both the criteria of being a naturalist and being humane. My strongest criticism of Santayana’s approach relates to his

6 George Santayana, Persons and Places:  Fragments of Autobiography (Cambridge, MA and London, England: The mit Press, 1986), 234–​35.

326 Appendix 2 individualism. One aspect of modern science is the discovery of how much in common we share with all human beings and other living beings. Our genetic structure may produce individuals that look different, live in different locations, and have different ways of living, but we also have much in common: our genetic base, common needs for food, air and activities, friendship, family, and much more. These provide a basis for hope and perhaps greater commonality and community than an individualist approach may suggest.

2

Response to Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński’s Concerns:

2.1

A Clarification of Terms

Discussing word definitions and differences in usage are a common practice in philosophy. Even so, I doubt there is much genuine confusion in my use of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and global citizenship, and here is my attempt to clarify my usage of these terms. Cosmopolitanism suggests that all human beings are a part of a community. Santayana’s naturalism is the foundation for his view, and one can find its reverberation in major contemporary work. For example, in Chapter 9, “Santayana: Hispanic-​American, Cosmopolitan Philosopher, and World-​Citizen,” I write about Kwame Anthony Appiah who is perhaps the best-​known contemporary philosopher writing on cosmopolitanism. Appiah notes the clash between universal concern and respect for legitimate differences, and he suggests cosmopolitanism is a community in which individuals from different backgrounds (economic, geographical, social, etc.) have mutual respect despite having different beliefs about religion, politics, justice, equality, etc. Multiculturalism has a range of meanings in different disciplinary contexts. The one I  find most useful is from sociology. A  variety of groups with different ethnic backgrounds work together, collaborating with one another, without relinquishing their own ethnic identity. Santayana was clearly like this in never giving up is Spanish citizenship and in continuing many of the relationships he established in the U.S. even after he left in 1912 and never returned. He traveled the world without giving up his identity while at the same time appreciating and sometimes admiring different ways of living in diverse cultures with distinct ideals of human perfection. Being a global citizen is consistent with cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. In short, being a global citizen indicates that one’s identity is not bound or restricted by one’s origin, politics, geographic location or sociological standing. One recognizes the broader humanity on earth, and perhaps elsewhere, without denouncing one’s nationality or origin. Santayana’s family heritage from both his father and mother was international in scope, and Santayana’s travels and residences in many countries brought a respect for other cultures and their everyday existence as well as ideals.

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My own understanding of these issues came not merely from dictionaries or philosophical discussions, but from chairing international commissions for the American Council of Education and the American Association of Colleges and Universities. I also held academic posts in Europe and China and have been fortunate to visit and give scholarly addresses in many countries. I also worked diligently to sponsor international scholars and researchers in the U.S., including Krzysztof Skowroński who as a visiting scholar at Indiana University was a pleasure to host. As Santayana would note, experience is important.

2.2

Critical Editions

Krzysztof Skowroński notes that I have not authored a book and that much of my academic research has produced the critical editions or, as he refers to them, “re-​editions” of Santayana’s works. I have not authored a book, but I have edited forty-​eight books including twelve books of The Works of George Santayana, and presently I have contributed fifty-​one articles to various journals. Interestingly, I found that books were not the fashion once I began my work in medicine, genetics, and full-​time administration, but articles and collaboration were the accepted norm. For me, it is no small pleasure to have a book published that includes many of my articles and essays published over a half century. Although there is some repetition in the articles, they do constitute a reasonably consistent pattern in my work as well as explore the principal areas of my research beyond Santayana scholarship. Just a brief comment about critical editions. I  would not describe them as “re-​ editions” which would seem to mean that one takes one form of a published work and re-​publishes it, but I am not sure that is what Krzysztof meant. Critical editions come under strict guidelines managed by the Association for Documentary Editing and the Council for Scholarly Editions (mla). The purpose of a critical edition is to produce a work as close to the author’s final intentions as possible based on the documented critical judgment of the editor, and there are many rigorous steps in that process. For example, Persons and Places, the first volume of the Santayana Edition, required eight years of research on my part working with a five-​person staff including the Textual Editor, William G. Holzberger. One chooses a copy-​text that is closest to the author’s original intentions for the publication of the book. Often a manuscript or typescript is chosen. In this case, I was fortunate over time to have access to the manuscripts of the three autobiographical books, and we also had access to the pre copy-​text material in four notebooks housed at Columbia University’s Special Collections Library. One then transcribes the manuscript, checking the accuracy with a minimum of two independent sight collations conducted by two different sets of independent researchers. Then one compares the transcription to all typescripts, proofs, and published forms of the text using at a minimum the same sight collation procedure with two independent sets of researchers. The copy-​text is sight collated against the first printed impression of

328 Appendix 2 each edition and that is then compared to the last impression of that edition. Variants are then traced to the specific impression of the publication. Because the first book of the autobiography was a best-​selling book in the U.S. and England, there were multiple editions of the first book of Persons and Places and many impressions of each. We discovered over six hundred typed pages of substantive variants between the copy-​text and the published versions.7 Then one determines which of these variants are consistent with the author’s final intentions by examining all the relevant letters, publisher’s proofs, notes, and other material relating to this publication while also conducting interviews of pertinent individuals. Finally, one accounts for every editorial change made in the copy-​text to produce the critical edition, delineates them in a list of substantive variants, describes the process in a commentary, and produces an index and notes on the text. This is a long, tedious process that based on the critical judgment of the editor produces a volume that is as close to the author’s final intention as possible. For Persons and Places this resulted in a text that is importantly different from any published version. Rather than Santayana re-​edited, the critical editions are more Santayana restored. Critical editions require significant financial support, a dedicated staff, and supporting institutions. The National Endowment for the Humanities (neh) and several independent donors including Corliss Lamont and Emil Ogden provided the financial basis for my twenty-​seven years as the leader of this project. The dedication of the staff was remarkable, and the University of Tampa, Texas A&M University, and Indiana University Indianapolis supported our work. To be honest, I  never envisioned I  would spend nearly three decades bent over manuscripts, typescripts, letters and other material learning about George Santayana and determining what his final intentions were for his publications. But I did, and I am pleased to have learned so much, to have engaged so many other scholars and researchers in the process, and to continue to learn even more in my retirement.

2.3 Holocaust

Santayana’s silence about the Holocaust is hard to understand, and Skowroński devotes a portion of his critique to this. I agree that this is a significant silence and needs to be noted while at the same time there is ample evidence as to why he may have been largely quiet in the face of this horror. In several articles I discuss the Holocaust and the absence of Santayana commenting on it.8 I will not repeat my previous comments here but simply note two considerations. 7 George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, Critical Edition edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. (Cambridge, MA and London, England: The mit Press, 1986), 649–​677. 8 For example, Herman J. Saatkamp, “Santayana on the Holocaust and the Nazis,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, (no. 36, 2018), 61–​63, 65–​66, 67, 68.

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First, prior to wwii, Santayana was aware of many human horrors including holocausts. In fact, he uses these human tragedies to counter the optimistic religious and idealistic views of Royce and others who in the face of these horrors still emphasize their optimism of living in God’s world. With irony he writes in 1930, “Why should a few knocks, or a great many holocausts, chill his ardour in living in God’s world?”9 For Santayana, the arational base of war lies not in reason but in the physical makeup of the peoples and in the material conditions of their cultures. Second, I want to address another issue raised by Skowroński regarding the publication of Dominations and Powers. He writes that Santayana had a “convenient opportunity” to write about the Holocaust “given his voluminous book dedicated to socio-​ political philosophy, Dominations and Powers.” Put bluntly, this is not correct. A quick look at the history of Dominations and Powers makes this clear. True, the book was published in 1951, but the opportunity to write about the Holocaust or even include it in Dominations and Powers was extremely limited by his location, circumstances and health. Rome was liberated on 4 June 1944, but Santayana’s focus on writing was sporadic for some time after liberation. He was principally concerned with the financial well-​ being of his literary assistant, Daniel Cory, and the $7,000 owed to the Blue Nuns in the hospital clinic where he had resided since 1940. Because of wwii, no correspondence or funds could be sent to Italy, and the nuns agreed to care for Santayana without immediate compensation and instead waited to be paid when the war ended. However, Santayana did not receive his money as expected following the war. George Sturgis managed Santayana’s finances, and there were family complications due to a contested divorce, second marriage and death of George Sturgis that significantly delayed the arrival of Santayana’s funds coming from the U.S. to Italy—​and perhaps one should not mention the appearance of an illegitimate son of George Sturgis. By 1946 the legal issues of Santayana’s funds were largely resolved. In the meantime, Santayana welcomed many soldiers and reporters who visited him at the hospital-​clinic. In addition, pressure to publish more works was increasing. As soon as communication with the U.S. was restored, John Hall Wheelock (Editor for Scribner’s), encouraged Santayana to produce as many publications as he could because of the demand for Santayana’s works and out of compassion for Daniel Cory’s financial needs. Complicating all this was Santayana’s health which was deteriorating primarily because of age and later by cancer. By 1949 Daniel Cory writes to Wheelock that Santayana was blind in one eye and needed a magnifying glass to read with his good eye.10 He also suffered from hearing loss and several visitors noted that he seemed not to

9 10

George Santayana, The Realm of Matter (New York: Scribner’s; London: Constable, 1930), 203. Daniel Cory to John Hall Wheelock, 30 December 1949, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons 1846–​1984, Special Collections Princeton University Library.

330 Appendix 2 respond to their comments or questions, but instead talked about other subjects. In 1952, Santayana fell on the Spanish Steps and nearly died after visiting the Spanish Embassy to renew his Spanish passport. Even though his health worsened significantly from 1946 until his death, he, with the help of Daniel Cory, managed to publish six volumes before and after Santayana’s death on 26 September 1952. Cory provided significant editing support, and more, in pulling together material for later publications including The Middle Span (1945), The Idea of Christ in the Gospels; or, God in Man: A Critical Essay (1946), Dialogues in Limbo, With Three New Dialogues (1948), Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government (1951), My Host the World (1953) and a one-​volume edition of The Life of Reason (1954) that was edited mostly by Cory. Dominations and Powers was last on Santayana’s list of priorities. The reasons for this are varied. He put this work aside in part to accommodate Cory who would benefit from immediate royalties of other publications that were closer to being finished.11 And the state of the manuscript was a “dreadful mess” as he wrote to Cory on 17 February 1945 noting that “If I live, I still hope to bring some order into that chaos. The war has quickened my interest in that subject. But for the moment, I am busy with the final revision of The Idea of Christ. It is nearly done.”12 The dreadful mess was one created over a long time. Santayana may have drafted some notes of his political views at the turn of the 20th century following his publication of The Life of Reason (1905–​1906). He left Harvard in 1912 and after more than twenty trips between England and Europe, he finally settled on living in Paris. Then World War I caught him in England, and he could not return to France and did not want to return to the U.S. Until the end of wwi, he spent the remainder of his time at first in London and then primarily in Oxford and Cambridge. He at first returned to writing The Realms of Being and some notes for Dominations and Powers, but the brutality and hardships of the war caused him to turn away from these projects. Instead he published a book on German egoism, gave lectures on his American experience, and wrote some of his best poetry as I mentioned earlier. As a result, his notes for Dominations and Powers lay dormant for several years with some additional work in the following three decades, but this erratic work was not suitable as a manuscript for publication. Then in 1945 with the aid of Daniel Cory, his literary assistant, Santayana began work on more publications while Dominations and Powers was last to be considered. By the time Santayana seemed prepared to complete this book, he was far more reliant on Daniel Cory because of his declining health. 11 12

John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 465. George Santayana to Daniel Cory, 17 February 1945, The Letters of George Santayana Book Seven, 1941—​1947, edited by William G.  Holzberger and Herman J.  Saatkamp, Jr. (Cambridge, MA and London, England 2006), 126.

Santayana’s Delight in Living

331

Indeed, Cory implied that he co-​authored this book with Santayana.13 Even so, Santayana’s letter to Cory on 28 July 1950 gives explicit instruction to Cory to call attention to repetitions and awkwardness of style: “I expect you to remove anything that is troublesome, but not to substitute anything else without consulting me.” But Cory appears to have done more and in a letter to Wheelock indicates he would “intercede with Mary with The Most High” regarding “any passages that might arouse animosity … as the political conscience is very touchy”14 and he repeated this offer on 1 October 1950. Cory also hoped that Dominations and Powers would become a Book-​of-​the-​Month Club selection, meaning it would bring in more royalties. I make these points simply to indicate that Santayana’s involvement in the final editing of Dominations and Powers is unusual with Santayana being far less involved in the final manuscript drawn from his notes written largely before 1940. In some ways I am grateful that I will not be doing the critical edition of Dominations and Powers because one would have to determine exactly what constitutes Santayana’s contribution versus Daniel Cory’s. The manuscripts and typescripts at the Texas Humanities Resource Center in Austin that Cory sold to the University of Texas may help in making these decisions. Once before, I had to make a similar decision regarding the one-​ volume Life of Reason. Research indicated that Daniel Cory took considerable liberty in choosing what to include and what to omit in this publication, and it could not be considered as a primary source of Santayana’s work. I do not think that is likely to be the case for Dominations and Powers, but I do believe it will not be a simple or easy task to produce the critical edition. All of this is to say, that the Holocaust is not mentioned in this voluminous book does not indicate a deliberate choice on the part of Santayana but simply indicates that the notes were written before the Holocaust was well-​known and Santayana played less of a role in the publication than he normally would.

2.4

The Liberal Arts

Skowroński is concerned, as are many of our colleagues, about the future of the humanities and the liberal arts in higher education. This concern is highlighted by the growing tensions between nations, within universities, and by the financial conditions now rising because of the coronavirus pandemic. In some ways, the roots of these difficulties have a long history in higher education. Santayana highlights Harvard’s business-​like approach and lack of encouraging intellectual curiosity as causes for his leaving Harvard in 1912 at the age of forty-​eight and never returning. One can only wonder what he would say about the current state of American universities! Having served in many university administrative roles, I share Skowroński’s concern. I have 13 McCormick, Santayana, p. 484 and footnote 4. 14 Daniel Cory to John Hall Wheelock, 25 April 1950, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons 1846–​1984, Special Collections Princeton University Library.

332 Appendix 2 seen firsthand how finances, state and local issues, the economy, individual gifts and endowments, and job prospects shape higher education. At present, it appears that the American economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic will likely result in many private universities folding as well as state universities either folding or being folded into larger systems. Being optimistic is difficult just now, and if there is a serious downturn in higher education, then the implications for scientific and technological research and development will have a significant and negative impact on the United States. However, one may also hope that the creativity found in the faculty and staff of American universities will find ways of achieving the educational outcomes that not only result in employment but also result in an educated community dedicated to advancing humanity and equality in America. And if Santayana is correct, the liberal arts as celebrations of life live beyond the classroom and universities. They are embodied and expressed in our very existence.

2.5

Final Remarks

Although my life and professional affiliations have been quite different from those of Santayana, I must conclude by expressing my esteem for him and the life he lived. I differ with him in life choices and in areas of scholarship and research, but I marvel at his ability to maintain his identity while living and teaching as a foreigner in America, his living through many conflicts and wars and maintaining a view of humanity and quality of life that was positive, his concentration on the beautiful and the spiritual in human life, his knowledge and acceptance of other views, and his remarkable ability to write with clarity, beauty and engagement. He gave life his all. Two days before his death, Daniel Cory asked Santayana if he was suffering. His reply: “Yes, my friend. But my aguish is entirely physical, there are no moral difficulties whatsoever.”15 When Santayana’s remains were placed in the “Panteon de la Obra Pia espanola” in Rome, Cory read a portion of “The Poet’s Testament,” a poem of Santayana’s affirmation of his naturalism and his going to the grave: I give back to the earth what the earth gave, All to the furrow, nothing to the grave. The candle’s out, the spirit’s vigil spent; Sight may not follow where the vision went.16 Sight may not follow, but thoughts and memories may. One may only hope that each of us gives all to the furrow and nothing to the grave, and what remains of us are memories and aspects of other lives. That was Santayana’s achievement. 15 16

Daniel M. Cory, Santayana: The Later Years, A Portrait with Letters (New York: Braziller, 1963), 325. George Santayana, The Complete Poems of George Santayana: A Critical Edition. Edited by William G. Holzberger (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1979), 268.

Index Aaron, Daniel 175 Abbot, Henry Ward 83 Abusua 115–​116 Abuthnot, J. 265–​266n8 Academia 4–​5, 59, 92, 108, 164, 262–​263, 295, 300, 302, 304–​305  see also Higher Education Adamson, T.E. 264–​265n6 Aesthetics 4–​5, 59–​60, 87, 92, 104–​105, 106, 108, 125, 215–​216, 231, 300, 302, 313–​314 African-​American 117 Aiken, Conrad 288 Akan 115–​116 Alcibiades 73 Alozie, C.F. 266–​267 Alston, William P. 16n1, 16n2, 21n13 America 5–​6, 24–​25, 33, 56, 58, 59–​61, 62, 64, 65, 69, 70, 73–​74, 75, 76, 79, 87, 89–​90, 92, 93–​94, 101, 102–​107, 120–​121, 123, 134, 154, 158–​159, 177, 191–​192, 193–​194, 195–​196, 197–​198, 199, 202, 211–​212, 213, 214–​215, 219–​221, 222, 226, 252, 258–​259, 260, 271, 295–​299, 300, 302, 303–​306, 310, 311, 312–​313, 325, 330, 331–​332  see also Americanism (American Culture), United States, U.S. (USA) Americanism 297 (American Culture)   see also America, U.S. (USA) Americanization 191, 192, 313  see also Americanism (American Culture), America, United States, U.S. (USA) Andreasan, Nancy 29 Anglo-​Saxon 107–​108, 216, 313 animal faith 3, 9–​15, 19, 24–​25, 29, 31, 41, 46–​47, 50–​51, 207, 209, 231, 280, 281–​283, 284, 286, 290 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 111, 113–​118, 119, 121, 123, 124, 326 Aristippus 73 Aristotle (Aristotelian) 5, 25–​26, 91, 105, 126–​127, 169, 208, 211, 220, 223–​224, 304 Armstrong, David 25–​26 Arnett, Willard E. 77–​78, 77–​78n11 Ashmore, Jerome 77

Association for Documentary Editing (ade) x, 146–​147, 254, 293–​294, 327–​328 Attanucci, J. 268n17 Austin, John Langshaw 25–​26, 151n4 Avant-​garde 305–​306 Avicenna 73 Ávila (Spain) ix, 60, 69–​70, 75, 76–​77, 78–​79, 80, 82, 90, 92, 97, 104, 142, 201, 203, 222, 257–​258, 295, 296–​297 Ayer, Alfred 25–​26, 208 Baird, Patricia A. 262–​263n2 Baldwin Jr., D.C. 264–​265n6, 267–​268n14, 268–​269n19, 269–​270n21 Ballowe, James 54–​55n28, 78n12, 129, 129n3, 300–​301n27, 317–​318n88 Barcelona (Spain) 69 Bargen, Mark 264–​265n6 Beauty (the Beautiful) 53–​54, 59–​60, 79, 88, 95–​96, 104–​105, 106, 125, 206–​207, 210, 215–​216, 220, 224–​225, 228, 246–​247, 252, 300, 313–​314, 316–​317, 332 Beethoven, Ludwig van 163 Bellingham, Susan 77–​78 Bergman, Mats 303–​304n35 Berkeley, George 25–​26 Bernstein, Richard J. 272, 276–​277 Bickford, Charlene 261 Blasi, A. 269n20 Bloom, Floyd E. 29 Blue Nuns 62, 140–​141, 186, 329 Blumenberg, Hans 276–​277 Boltzmann, Ludwig 191 Borrás, Sturgis de Santayana, Josefina 67–​70 (Santayana’s mother)  Borrás y Bofarull, José 67–​68 (Santayana’s maternal grandfather)  Bosco, Nynfa 77–​78 Boston 58, 68–​70, 78n12, 89–​90, 101–​102, 104, 139, 140, 212, 222, 253n1, 288 Boston Latin School 70, 120–​121, 302 Bowers, Fredson 152, 160, 164–​165, 181–​183, 256  see also Greg, Sir Walter

334 index Bridges, Brenda 146, 261 Brigham Young University 175 Brooks, David 134, 134n8 Brooks, Van Wyck 288 Brown, Donald 119 Brownell, Baker 288 Burton, Robert A. 130–​131n4, 284n6, 324n4 Busch, Frederick 181–​182n1, 187–​188n10, 188n12, 193 Bynner, Witter 288 Caliphate 318–​319  see also isis, Muslim Calvinism 103 Canby, Henry Seidel 95–​96 Candee, Daniel 264–​265n5, 264–​265n6 Capitalism ix, 132–​133, 203–​204, 221, 252, 298, 303–​304 Caravaggio, Michelangelo 3, 140–​142 Carnap, Rudolf 25–​27, 207, 208–​209, 275 Carter, David 78, 201–​202 Cartesian 16, 166, 208–​209, 277–​278  see also Descartes Castilla (Spain) 313  see also Spain Cataluña (Spain) 313  see also Spain Catholicism 206 Center for Ray Bradbury Studies 146 Cervantes, Miguel de 200–​201 Chase, Phil 261 Chestnutt, David 173 Chisholm, R.M. 16n2 Christianity 48, 50, 112–​113, 133, 186, 220, 286, 299n21, 307 (Christian, Christians)  City College of New York 74, 100–​101 Civil Rights 234, 308 Clemens, Cyril C. 101n6 Clinica della Piccola Compagna di Maria 62, 75, 93, 140–​141, 186 (Rome)  Cohen, Morris Raphael 74, 100–​101 Colby, Anne 265–​266n8 Coleman, Martin 146, 280, 280n1 Columbia University 24–​25, 60, 64n14, 142–​ 143, 144–​145, 147, 159–​160, 295, 327–​328 Communism (Communist) 314, 316  see also Marx, Marxism, Socialism

Community 38, 41–​42, 78–​79, 91–​92, 93–​94, 97, 110, 112, 113, 115, 123, 146, 181, 228, 234–​235, 288, 291, 316, 325–​326, 331–​332 Complutense University of Madrid 142, 295 Conant, James B. 288 Consciousness x, 6–​7, 9–​10, 12–​14, 17–​18, 19–​21, 38–​39, 98, 99, 109, 122–​124, 126, 128, 130–​131, 132, 196–​197, 206–​207, 210, 231–​233, 260, 273, 280, 281–​286, 287–​288, 289, 323, 324–​325, 325n5 Cook, C.D. 264–​265n6 Cook, Francis H. 169n4, 177–​178n1 Copy-​Text 163, 164–​166, 167–​168, 170–​172, 176, 178, 181, 183, 189, 191, 192, 217–​219, 255, 256, 257–​258, 327–​328 Corps-​text 163, 164–​165, 168–​169, 171–​172, 183 Cory, Daniel 61–​62, 61–​62n9, 63–​64, 64n14, 71, 75–​76, 87, 93, 95–​96, 122, 140, 155–​157, 159–​160, 184, 185–​186, 221, 325, 329–​331, 332 Cory, Margot ix, 139–​142, 144–​145, 295 Cosmopolitanism 110, 111–​114, 117, 119–​122, 124, 311–​312, 313, 326 Creativity 6, 7, 65–​66, 81, 103–​104, 106–​107, 126, 129–​130, 131, 248–​249, 251, 331–​332 Cruelty 306–​307, 309  see also Evil Cueto, Shirley 146 Cullen, Charles 173 Cutting, Bronson 288 Dante, Alighieri 85–​86, 200–​201 Danto, Arthur 76–​77, 87, 100–​101, 127–​128, 142–​143, 195, 202, 209, 231, 295 Darwin, Charles 146–​147 Datum 9, 11–​12, 20–​21, 22, 31, 41–​42, 211  see also Essence Davidson, Donald 25–​26, 276–​277, 278 Davis, Cullom 261 Dawidoff, David 78, 201–​202 Dawson, Hugh J. 315–​316n78 Death ix, 56, 62, 63–​64, 65, 71, 74, 75–​76, 90–​91, 93, 100–​101, 104, 122, 130–​131, 140, 143–​144, 154, 155–​156, 159–​160, 164, 168–​169, 178, 181–​182n1, 185, 188, 190, 201, 203, 212, 221, 233–​234, 251–​252, 256–​257, 280n2, 287, 288–​289, 291, 302, 306–​308, 322, 324–​325, 329–​330, 332 DeMarco, Joseph P. 240n2

index Democracy ix, 5–​6, 106–​107, 128–​129, 132–​133, 134, 196–​197, 199–​200, 221, 226, 241–​242, 274–​275, 314 Democritus 73, 84–​85 Dennett, Daniel 276–​277 Deontology (Deontological) 111 Derrida, Jacques 112–​113, 276–​277 Descartes 16–​17, 25–​26, 29–​30, 109, 276–​277  see also Cartesian Detar, Richard 203 de Tocqueville, Alexis 298 de Waal, Cornelis 303–​304n35 Dewey, John 4, 5–​6, 73–​74n6, 76–​77, 92, 99, 106–​107, 128n1, 146–​147, 196, 199–​201, 204, 205, 209, 214, 215, 216, 221, 240–​242, 244, 272, 273, 274–​275, 274–​275n15, 276–​278, 303–​304 Dickens, Charles 301 Difference Principle 127, 224 Dignity 80, 97, 108, 263–​264, 317–​318 Dilworth, David 241n4, 297 Diogenes of Sinope 112 Dionysius the Younger 73 Douglass, Frederick 146 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt 111, 288 Eastman, Max 288 Education 4–​5, 99, 102, 103–​105, 108, 110, 134, 196, 206, 208, 213, 226–​227, 231, 233, 234–​235, 241–​242, 247, 249, 250, 251, 258, 269, 296, 300–​301, 302–​303, 309, 311, 312, 313–​314, 318–​319, 327, 331–​332  see also Higher Education, Academia, Liberal Arts Edwards, Jonathan 296 Egotism 62–​63, 204, 297, 311–​312, 325 Einstein, Albert 146–​147, 165 Eliot, Charles 300–​301 Eliot. T.S. 200–​201, 213, 288 Ellison, Elizabeth M. 262n1 Emerson, Ralph Waldo (Emersonian) 175, 197, 198, 296 Epiphenomenalism 12–​14, 25, 323 Epistemology (Epistemic) 14, 17, 21–​22, 198–​199, 273, 277–​278, 317 Equality 5–​6, 106–​108, 199–​200, 223–​224, 226, 227, 263–​264, 308, 326, 331–​332

335 Essence 5, 9–​10, 11–​14, 17–​21, 30, 31, 33, 38–​39, 41, 46, 48, 51–​53, 55, 70–​71, 106, 109, 121, 122, 128, 131, 206–​207, 210–​211, 281, 282, 283–​284, 289, 300  see also Realm of Essence (The), Universals, Datum Ethics x, 80–​81, 84–​85, 150–​151, 220, 234, 251, 262–​263, 267–​268, 296, 302, 307–​308  see also Morality Euclid of Alexandria 25–​26 Eugenics 238–​239, 242, 244–​245, 259, 262–​263 Europe (European) 56, 57, 58, 59, 60–​61, 62, 73–​74, 75, 90, 91, 92, 93–​94, 102–​103, 104, 105, 134, 174, 200, 202, 205, 213, 214, 215, 219, 220–​221, 222, 244–​245, 260, 298, 303–​304, 308, 327, 330 European Union (The) 315 Excellence 7–​8, 65, 67–​68, 71, 84–​85, 122, 132, 134–​135, 169–​170, 196–​197, 220–​221, 222, 224, 225, 304, 314, 315, 316–​317, 325  see also Perfectionism Experience 9–​10, 11–​15, 17–​18, 26–​27, 29, 31, 34, 36, 38–​39, 40, 41, 42–​43, 51, 55, 70, 104–​105, 106, 115, 120–​121, 123–​124, 146–​147, 168–​169, 205, 206, 208–​209, 210, 214–​216, 219–​220, 223–​224, 233, 240–​242, 245, 248, 251–​252, 259, 272–​273, 284, 291, 310–​311, 313–​314, 327, 330 Evil 40n70, 41–​42, 43, 52, 67–​68, 119, 133, 203–​204, 306–​307  see also Cruelty Family ix, 59, 61–​63, 64, 65, 69–​70, 92, 95, 103, 104, 107–​108, 112, 114, 115–​116, 139, 140, 156, 158–​160, 164, 178–​179, 182n2, 222, 223–​225, 233–​235, 243, 248, 249–​250, 256–​257, 264n4, 293, 295, 313, 325–​326, 329 Fanaticism 79–​80, 152n6, 204–​205, 249–​250, 291, 300–​301n26 Farrell, Frank 272, 276–​277, 278 Fascism 62–​63, 95–​96, 203, 204, 206  see also Nazi, Nazism Fasol, Ilse 191 Feuer, Al 74 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 25–​26 Fiction 56–​58, 72, 115, 163, 251

336 index Final Intentions 147, 149, 150, 152–​155, 161, 166–​167, 182–​183, 183n3, 217, 218, 219, 327–​328 Foundationalism 16–​17, 16n2, 22, 23, 30 Fox, Richard M. 240n2 Franco, Francisco ix, 102n12, 221 Frankfurter, Felix 288 Frazer, G.S. 105–​106 Freedom 7, 31n32, 52, 53–​54, 62–​63, 81, 95–​96, 98–​99, 130, 134–​135, 150–​151, 223, 224–​225, 245–​246, 274–​275, 276  see also Liberty Freidenberg, Harry A. (Sergeant) 144, 159n15, 295 Froming, W.J. 266–​267, 266n12 Frost, Kris 146, 261 Frost, Robert 288 Friedman, John 76–​77 Gamo, José María Alonso 77–​78, 296–​297 García Martín, Pedro 77–​78, 80, 296–​297 Gender 267–​269, 268n17, 308 Generación del 98 296–​297, 299 Genetics x, 3, 165, 233, 234, 237, 239–​240, 241–​242, 245, 246–​248, 249, 250, 250n7, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258–​259, 262–​263, 262–​263n2, 265–​266, 267, 269, 287, 289–​290, 327 Genotype 239–​240, 242, 243–​244, 245–​247, 248–​249, 250, 253, 254, 256, 257 Genteel Tradition 78, 103, 201, 221 Germany (German) 49–​50, 59, 62–​63, 67, 92–​93, 95–​96, 109n23, 133, 137, 143, 192, 193–​194, 204, 222, 258–​259, 297, 307, 311n62, 312–​313, 325–​326, 330 Ghana 115, 118 Gibbs, John 265–​266n8, 266–​267 Gilligan, Carol 268 Globalization 297, 298 God (god) 55, 70, 83, 109, 112–​113, 114, 169, 177–​178, 186n9, 247, 329, 330  see also Religion Goldman, S.A. 265–​266n8 Good life (the) 69–​70, 97, 198–​199, 225–​226, 288, 289, 304–​305, 307–​308, 319–​320 Goodman, Nelson 200–​201 Gouinlock, John 272, 276–​278 Government ix, 5–​7, 62–​63, 69, 80, 89, 93–​94, 95–​96, 97, 104–​105, 106–​108, 110,

124, 128–​130, 133, 134, 141–​143, 164, 171, 196–​197, 199–​200, 219, 220–​221, 224–​228, 238–​239, 251, 259, 302, 324–​325 Goya, Francisco 67–​68 Greece (Greek) 71, 84–​85, 98, 112–​113, 122, 143–​144, 192, 211–​212, 220, 222, 226, 282, 303–​304, 317 Greg, Sir Walter 160, 164–​165, 181–​183, 217–​218, 256 Gross, Sidney 9n1 Grossman, Morris 83, 86 Haack, Susan 272, 277–​278 Hadley, Diana 261 Haidt, Jonathan 285–​286, 287 Hamilton, Ian 187–​188 Hampshire College 211–​212 Hance, Allen 272, 276–​277 Hancher, Michael 152 Hanna–​Calvert, Donna 146, 261 Hapgood, Hutchins 288 Harmony 98, 99, 117, 260, 316–​317 Hartshorne, Charles 272, 275–​276, 279 Harvard Lampoon 212 Harvard Monthly 196n2, 212, 288 Harvard University 24, 56–​57, 58, 62, 64n14, 70, 71, 73–​74, 76–​77, 89, 89n9, 90, 91–​92, 103–​105, 109, 109n23, 120–​121, 122, 154, 159–​160, 190–​191, 195–​196, 197–​198, 199, 203, 204–​205, 212, 213, 214, 219, 220, 222, 233–​234, 288–​289, 300–​305, 311–​312n63, 325, 330, 331–​332 Hasty Pudding Club 288 Hawking, Stephen 130–​131, 284, 287, 324 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 220, 273, 276–​277, 322 Heidegger, Martin 25–​26 Heraclitus 25–​26 Hermes 48, 55, 55n30, 70, 70n35, 120–​121 Hewer, Alexandra 266 Higher Education 196, 234–​235, 300  see also Academia Hispanic 4–​5, 6–​7, 78, 93–​94, 100, 101–​102, 104–​105, 201–​202, 260, 296, 297–​299, 298–​299n18, 300, 309n57, 313n71  see also Spain Hitler, Adolf 95–​96, 113, 193–​194, 226  see also Nazism (Nazi), Holocaust Hobson, Chuck 261

index Hodges, Michael 241n4 Holocaust 143–​144, 233–​234, 235, 258–​259, 291, 292, 305–​306, 305–​306n47, 307, 308n55, 309, 328–​329, 331  see also Nazism (Nazi), Hitler Holocaust Resource Center 390–​91  (Stockton University)  Holzberger, Annegret 146 Holzberger, William G. 39n64, 58n4, 90n12, 93n16, 101n6, 101n7, 101–​102n9, 104n16, 146, 155n7, 156–​157n10, 169–​170n5, 184n6, 185, 186n8, 203–​204n1, 220n5, 283–​284n5, 287n10, 295, 327–​328 Homer 316 Homosexuality (homosexual) 56–​57, 58–​205 Hook, Sidney 200–​201, 203–​204, 216 Housman, A.E. 61–​62n9, 91–​92 Hughson, Lois 77–​78 Human Genome Project 237–​238, 244, 250, 251, 255–​256, 262–​263 Human nature 7, 27n7, 27–​28, 28n9, 65, 84–​85, 129, 169–​170, 216, 235, 255–​256, 279, 282, 314 Humanism 81, 294–​295 Humanities 147, 263, 302–​303, 311, 319, 331–​332 Hume, David 25–​26, 27, 29, 31–​32, 37–​38, 109 Humor 4–​5, 64n14, 100, 102–​103, 105, 108–109, 140–​141, 144–​145, 156–​157, 212, 221, 281, 298–​299, 300, 310–​303, 322  see also Irony Hungary 133, 315 Huntington’s disease 238, 241–​243, 256–​257 Husted, Susan D.R. 264–​265n6 Idealism (Idealist) 35, 35n48, 66, 67–​68, 91, 105, 220, 283–​284, 322, 329 Imagination ix, 51–​52, 54, 59–​60, 70–​71, 81, 91, 99, 116, 117, 121, 129–​130, 131, 211, 255, 260, 297, 298–​299, 302, 309–​310 Indian (India) 48, 83 Indiana University Indianapolis School of Liberal Arts 146, 328 Institute for American Thought (Indianapolis) 146 Individualism 105–​107, 123, 240, 252, 294–​ 295, 298–​300, 315, 319, 325–​326

337 Integrity 39, 45, 49, 52, 55, 61–​62, 65–​66, 71, 119, 120–​121, 122, 124, 125, 177, 186, 206, 208, 214–​216, 310–​311 Intellectuals 114, 299, 302  see also Philosopher Intuition 9–​10, 11–​12, 14, 19–​21, 22–​23, 31–​33, 52, 87, 100–​101, 210, 273, 278, 285–​286, 322 Irony 4–​5, 25, 79, 94, 108–​109, 186, 212, 322, 329  see also Humor isis 318–​319  see also Caliphate, Muslims Italy 58, 63–​64, 75, 95–​96, 100n3, 155–​156, 222  see also Rome iupui (Indiana University-​Purdue University, Indianapolis) 293–​294, 295  see also Indiana University Indianapolis School of Liberal Arts James, Henry 100 James, Judith 261 James, William 4, 22n14, 48, 54–​55, 60, 73–​74, 76–​77, 91, 92, 102, 146–​147, 196, 197–​198, 200–​201, 209, 214–​215, 240–​242, 245, 256, 277–​278, 279, 296, 303–​304, 325 Jaschik, Scott 187–​188n11 Jew (Jewish, Jews) 85–​86, 113, 305–​306n47, 307, 308, 308n54, 312–​313  See also Holocaust Jewish Theological Seminary 142, 145, 295 (Cincinnati)  Johnson, Lionel 65 Jones, John 77–​78, 139, 146, 295n3 Justice 7, 45, 81, 127, 199–​200, 223–​224, 263n3, 263–​264, 268, 269, 316, 318–​319, 326 Kallen, Horace 6, 102n11, 106–​107, 145, 283–​284, 288, 323, 323n3 Kant, Immanuel (Kantian) 25–​26, 32–​34, 36, 112–​113, 273, 317–​318 Kennedy, John F. 187–​188n11, 193–​194 Kerr-​Lawson, Angus 76–​77, 146–​147, 295 Kinesis 203–​216 King Jr., Martin Luther 234 Kitcher, Philip 239

338 index Kline, Mary-​Jo 255n3 Knowledge 9, 10–​11, 14–​15, 16–​18, 19–​23, 26, 29–​31, 33–​34, 39–​43, 44–​47, 52–​53, 62–​63, 71, 79–​81, 87, 88, 94, 97, 98, 103–​105, 106, 109, 122, 132, 134–​135, 197, 198–​199, 206, 207, 208–​209, 214–​215, 222, 240, 241, 243–​246, 250–​252, 253–​254, 277, 281–​290, 303–​305, 313–​314  see also Epistemology Kohlberg, Lawrence 263–​269 Koran 316 Kosciuszko Foundation 295 Kripke, Saul 25–​26 Kundera, Milan 200–​201 Kuntz, Paul 48–​49, 77–​78 Lachs, John ix–​, 3, 10–​11n6, 19–​20n8, 77–​78, 141–​142, 201–​202, 208–​209, 280, 288–​289n11, 293–​294, 295, 296nn5-​8, 299, 299n20, 300–​301, 305, 310–​311 Lachs, Shirley 77–​78, 280 Lamont, Corliss 5–​6, 106–​107, 142–​143, 144–​145, 295, 328 Language xi, 4–​5, 14, 26–​27, 28, 29, 34, 37, 38, 44, 87, 104, 110, 114, 118, 129–​130, 143–​144, 150–​151, 187–​188, 197–​198, 207, 208, 209–​210, 242, 272, 273, 278, 296–​297, 321 Laodicean Club (Harvard) 288 Latin 109n23, 143–​144, 192, 211–​212 Lavine, Thelma Z. 272, 276–​278 Lee, Harper 116 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 25–​26 Leitz iii, Robert C. 77–​78, 201–​202 Lenin, Vladimir 95–​96 Levi, Albert William 265n7 Levinas, Emmanuel 112–​113 Levinson, Henry Samuel 54–​55, 78, 81, 195–​202, 296 Lewis and Clark 146–​147 Liberal Arts 234, 300–​303  see also Academia, Education, Higher Education Liberty 88–​89, 189–​190, 223, 263–​264, 297, 331  see also Freedom Liberalism 62–​63, 95–​96, 205, 206, 301, 305–​306

Libet, Ben 130–​131, 284, 324 Lickona, Thomas 265–​266n8 life of reason 122–​123, 222–​223, 225, 285, 286, 287, 288, 312, 318–​319 Life of Reason, The 49–​50, 67, 78n12, 92, 101–​102n9, 195–​196, 197, 202n14, 210, 212, 217n1, 219–​221, 223n10, 225n14, 231, 300–​301, 307–​308n53 (book)  Lind, Bruno 75, 77–​78n11, 88–​89n6, 109n23 (pseudonym of Robert C. Hahnel)  Lippmann, Walter 203, 213, 288 Litman, Alexander 74 London (England) 60, 62, 92, 164, 213, 330 Los Angeles (USA) 79, 110 Lotze, Rudolf Hermann 59, 77–​78 Lucretius 99 (Titus Lucretius Carus)  Lyon, Richard 76–​77, 295 Lyons, Nona Plessner 268n17 Mackie, John 25–​26, 43 Madrid (Spain) 60, 69–​70, 75, 89, 92, 104, 142, 257–​258, 295 Manzoni, Alessandro 164 Marssobian, Armen T. 298n15 Martin, R.M. 266–​267n12 Marx, Karl 62–​63, 127, 165, 203–​204, 322  see also Marxism, Socialism, Communism Marxism 106–​107, 203–​204, 205  see also Karl Marx, Socialism, Communism Mason, Tom 261 Materialism 12–​13, 22–​23, 35n48, 49–​50, 53, 62–​63, 65–​66, 67–​68, 69–​71, 72, 84–​85, 105, 121, 122, 127–​128, 150–​151, 197, 203–​204, 206, 216, 227–​228, 304, 321, 322  see also Naturalism Matter 5, 12–​13, 35n48, 36, 37–​38n59, 38–​39, 48, 51, 52, 53, 55, 67–​68, 128, 211, 282–​283, 289, 322, 329  see alsoRealm of Matter (The), Substance McColgan, E.B. 266–​267n12 McCormick, John 4, 4n2, 56n2, 60n7, 73–​74n6, 77–​78, 91n14, 100n2, 102, 102n13, 104–​105, 107–​108n21, 128n1, 144–​145, 158–​159n14, 201–​202, 295, 330n11 McDermott, John 76–​77, 240n2, 297n12

index McGann, Jerome J. 149–​150n2, 150n3, 167–​169, 183, 183n3 McGee, Glenn 239 Meliorism 303–​304  see also Progress metanoia 59, 90–​91, 233–​234, 288–​289 Metaphysics 4–​5, 24, 56, 65–​66, 76, 108, 128, 128n1, 198–​199, 317–​318, 322 Mill, John Stuart 265 Mind 12–​14, 16n2, 26, 29–​30, 31–​32, 50–​51, 59–​60, 95, 102, 109, 196, 225, 271, 278, 283–​284, 285, 287 Miss Welchman’s Kindergarten 70, 120–​121 mit Press (The) 3, 147, 293–​294 Moore, G. E. 25–​27, 207, 282 Monarchy (Monarchical) 226 Morality 7–​8, 26, 40, 43, 44–​45, 65, 70–​71, 84–​85, 113, 121, 135, 169–​170, 187–​188, 220–​221, 240, 248–​249, 263–​264, 268  see also Ethics Morison, Samuel Eliot 282 Mozart, Amadeus 146–​147 Multiculturalism 105, 293–​326 Music 5, 6, 35, 72, 82, 99, 104–​105, 114, 115, 119, 127–​128, 130–​131, 163, 178–​179, 215, 232–​233, 260, 283–​284, 323, 324 Muslims 133, 314  see also Caliphate, isis Mussolini, Benito 95–​96, 226  see also Fascism

339 Neo-​Platonism 48n1, 49–​54  see also Plato (Platonism, Platonic) Neurophysiology 6–​7, 29, 165, 284, 324 Neuroscience x, 29, 38, 44–​45, 241, 284 New England (USA) 57, 60–​61, 90, 104–​105, 298, 302, 313–​314 New York (USA) 60–​61, 63–​64, 68–​69, 74, 100–​101, 139, 142–​143, 155–​156, 313–​314 Nietzsche, Friedrich 102, 183n5, 251 Nissan, M. 264n4 Nixon, Richard Milhous 187–​188n11, 193–​194 Noddings, Nel 268 Nominalism 25 normal madness 42–​43, 47, 81 Novozámská, Jana 77–​78 Nussbaum, Martha C. 112n29

Oakman, Robert 173 Objectivism (Objective) 26, 40, 43–​47, 52, 70–​71, 121, 263, 299  see alsosub specie aeternitatis ok Club (Harvard) 288 Olivarez, Margie 264–​265n6, 268n18, 268–​269n19, 269–​270n21 Olmsted, Frederick Law 146–​147 Omstein, Richard 29 Ontology (Ontological) ix, 9–​10, 12–​13, 14–​15, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 211, 300 Oppenberg, Andrew A. 264–​265n6 Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society x, 76–​77, 146–​147, 218, Nagel, Thomas 6–​7, 25–​26, 32, 33–​35, 36, 47, 293–​294 70n34, 120–​121  see also Santayana Society, Santayana National Endowment for the Humanities (neh)  Edition 76–​77, 87–​88n4, 139, 146, 209, 295, 328 Oxford University 24, 60, 62, 174, 192 Native Americans 314 Nationalism 133, 134, 219, 233, 297, 312–​313 Padrón, Charles 293–​294n2, 300–​301n26 Naturalism 3, 24–​25, 26, 26n3, 28–​29, 30n27, Palmer, Beverly 261 31n33, 32n37, 33, 38–​39, 40, 40n70, 43, Panteón de la Obra Pía Española 72, 75–​76, 47, 49, 55, 70–​71, 80–​81, 88, 91, 97, 98, 93, 141 99, 105, 106–​108, 120–​122, 127–​129, 195, Parens, Erik 262–​263n2 198, 199–​200, 201–​202, 206, 208–​209, Paris (France) 60, 62, 92, 164, 213, 219, 222, 216, 219, 220–​221, 231, 232, 240–​241, 253, 302, 330 259, 294–​295, 296, 298–​299, 303–​304, Pedersen, Mette 76–​77 306–​307, 310–​311, 321, 322, 325, 326, 332 Peirce, Charles Sanders 4, 76–​77, 87, 92,  see also Materialism 100–​101, 146–​147, 209, 214–​215, 240–​241, Nazism (Nazi) 238–​239, 242, 244, 258–​259, 241n3, 275, 277–​278, 303–​304 291, 305–​307, 307n48, 308n55, 328n8 Pellino, Michael 77–​78  see also Fascism Pepper, Stephen 316–​317n83

340 index Perfectionism (Perfection) 45, 51–​52, 67–​68, 70–​71, 99, 105, 120, 121, 260, 303, 304, 311–​312, 315–​317, 318–​319  see also Excellence Phenotype 239–​240, 242, 243–​245, 253, 254, 256–​257 Philippines 67–​69, 89, 197–​198, 313 Philosopher ix, x, 4–​8, 24–​25, 48–​49, 54–​55n28, 56, 57, 57n3, 59–​61, 72, 76, 83n1, 84–​85, 86n12, 87, 92–​93, 95, 100–​102, 109, 110, 112n28, 116–​117, 124–​125, 126, 130–​131, 135, 142–​143, 149, 158, 169–​170, 186, 191, 195, 197–​199, 203, 208, 210, 214, 215, 221, 226, 231, 232, 253n1, 253, 274–​275, 276–​277, 278–​279, 295, 296–​300, 300n22, 302, 303–​304, 305–​306, 308, 309n57, 313n71, 316, 319–​320, 325, 326  see also Philosophy, Intellectuals Philosophy x, xi, 1, 3–​6, 7, 9–​12, 14–​15, 17–​18, 24, 25–​26, 29, 36–​37, 48–​50, 53–​54, 55, 56–​57, 59–​61, 62–​63, 65–​66, 67, 70, 71, 73–​74, 76, 77–​78, 81, 85, 87–​89, 90, 91, 92–​93, 96, 97–​98, 100–​101, 103, 104–​107, 108–​109, 120–​121, 122, 124–​125, 131, 134–​135, 141–​142, 146–​147, 169, 185–​186, 195–​200, 201–​202, 204, 206–​207, 208, 210–​212, 214–​216, 219–​221, 229–​234, 240, 252, 271–​279, 280–​285, 287, 288–​290, 293–​294, 296, 300–​308, 309, 312–​313, 316–​317, 319–​320, 321–​326, 329  see also Philosopher, Intellectuals Picasso, Pablo 88–​89 Pilgrim 48–​54  see also Traveler Pinkas, Daniel 305–​306, 308, 308n54 Plato (Platonism, Platonic) 5, 25–​26, 31, 48–​50, 52, 53, 55, 92–​93, 105, 211, 220, 223, 244–​245, 275, 283–​284, 317  see also, Neoplatonic Pluralism 46–​47, 240, 311–​312, 319 (Plurality)  Poetry 5, 6, 24, 59–​61, 61–​62n9, 73–​74n6, 90, 91–​92, 104–​105, 119, 128, 131, 134–​135, 150, 177, 195–​196, 198, 209, 211–​212, 214, 233–​234, 290, 296–​297, 324, 325, 330 Poland 133, 297, 315 Populism 134, 219, 312–​313, 315 Porte, Joel 76–​77, 295

Pound, Ezra 62–​63, 203 Power, Clark 265–​266n8 Pragmatism 5–​6, 33, 54, 81, 91, 97, 104–​105, 106–​107, 159–​160, 165, 195–​198, 200–​202, 214, 232, 237, 239, 244, 246, 247–​248, 249, 250–​252, 271, 272–​273, 276–​277, 278–​279, 283–​284, 296–​299, 303–​304, 305, 310  see also stoic pragmatist Price, Kenneth M. 77–​78 Princeton University 142, 144–​145, 147, 159n15, 295, 329–​330n15, 330–​331n14 Progress 5, 7, 53, 94, 111, 303–​305, 310  see also Meliorism Protagoras 25–​26 Protestantism (Protestant) 48, 60–​61, 70, 75–​76, 104–​105, 109n23, 120–​121, 313–​314 Psyche x, 5–​6, 12–​13, 31–​32, 38–​39, 44–​45, 46, 109, 120, 128, 130–​131, 134–​135, 231, 232–​233, 281–​282, 283–​284, 285–​286, 287–​288, 289, 290, 324 Psychology 11–​12, 53, 128, 135, 263, 285–​286, 287 Public Opinion 94, 95–​96, 108n22, 299, 305 Pulitzer Prize 104, 221, 305 Puritanism 40n70, 60–​61, 79, 90, 93–​94, 103, 104–​105 Putnam, Hilary 87, 100–​101, 200–​201, 273, 278, 295, 311–​312, 322 Quine, Willard van Orman 24, 25–​27, 40n69, 197, 200–​201 Race 100, 112, 286, 308, 315–​316 Rawls, John 127, 224–​225, 268 Reality 17–​18, 25, 26, 32–​34, 35–​36, 38–​39, 42, 43, 46, 50–​51, 52–​53, 55, 83n1, 86n12, 110, 128, 134–​135, 150, 198–​199, 211, 231, 240, 251, 273, 278 Realism 10–​11, 13n12, 25, 32–​33, 104–​105, 198, 276–​277, 278, 283–​284 Realms of Being (The) 9–​10n4, 9–​10n5, 10–​11n7, 36n50, 36, 37–​38, 48, 50, 50–​51n8, 51n16, 51n18, 52n21, 52n23, 70–​71n36, 92–​93, 121n66, 127–​128, 198–​199, 211, 231, 282, 325, 330  see also Being Realm of Essence (The) 51–​53  see also Essence

index Realm of Matter (The) 35n48, 37–​38, 67–​68n26, 329n9  see also Matter, Substance Realm of Truth (The) 208  see also Truth Reason 5–​6, 7, 29–​30, 31–​32, 42, 46–​47, 50–​51, 79–​80, 86, 87–​88, 92, 93–​94, 95–​96, 98, 99, 102, 110, 122, 126, 129, 130–​131, 132, 134–​135, 167, 195–​196, 197, 210, 212, 217, 219–​223, 224–​225, 231, 232–​233, 247, 253, 260, 262–​150, 264–​270, 281–​283, 284, 290, 293, 300, 307–​308, 311, 314, 324, 329  see life of Reason Reck, Andrew 77–​78, 83n1, 86n12 Reductionism (Reductionist) 40–​41, 277–​278 Reid, Thomas 25–​26 Relativism (Relativist) 32–​38, 65–​66, 70, 80–​81, 120–​121, 208, 272, 317–​319 Religion 3, 4–​5, 48, 56, 59–​61, 67, 73, 76, 83, 87, 96, 104–​105, 108, 113, 114, 122–​123, 186, 196–​197, 198, 204–​205, 219, 225, 285, 286, 296, 313–​314, 319–​320, 326  see also God (god) Rensberger, Boyce 254–​255n2 Republican 110, 314 (American political party)  Rest, James R. 266n9 Rome (Italy) 56–​57, 58, 60, 62–​64, 72, 74, 75–​76, 92, 93, 95–​96, 100–​101, 115, 139, 140–​143, 144–​145, 155–​156, 169–​170, 186, 203, 213, 216, 233–​234, 295, 329, 332 Rorty, Richard 199, 200–​201, 271–​94, 297, 297n12, 310 Rosenfield, Israel 38n60 Rowland, Leslie 261 Roy, Dilip Kumar 77–​78 Royce, Josiah 4, 22n14, 48, 54–​55, 59, 87, 91, 92, 100–​101, 146, 196, 197–​198n5, 214–​215, 296, 297, 303–​304, 325, 329 Russell, Bertrand 9, 12, 25–​26, 48, 57, 83–​84, 92, 105–​106, 107–​108, 143–​144, 196, 198–​ 200, 207–​209, 211, 319–​320 Russell, John Stanley 65, 143–​144 Russell, Peter 105–​106 Ryder, John 298n15 Safford, S. 265–​266n8 Salinger, J.D. 187–​188

341 Santayana, Agustín 67–​70, 89–​90, 234 (Santayana’s father)  Santayana Society 76–​77, 146–​147, 218, 293–​294  see also Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society Santayana Edition 139, 142–​143, 146–​147, 163, 174–​175, 183–​187, 217–​218, 254, 259, 261, 293–​294, 295, 327–​328  see also Santayana Society Sastre, Celedonio 145 Schilpp, Paul Arthur 9n2, 304n40, 319–​320n92 Schopenhauer, Arthur 25–​26, 59, 99 Schwartz, Benjamin P. 77–​78n11, 184, 185 Science (Scientist) 5, 6–​7, 26, 29, 36, 38–​39, 40, 40n70, 41, 42, 43, 44–​45, 81, 87, 96, 104–​105, 106, 115, 122–​123, 126, 129–​130, 132, 146–​147, 215–​216, 225, 233, 241, 242, 253, 254, 258, 259–​260, 271, 273, 284, 288, 289–​290, 299, 313–​314, 322–​323, 325–​326 Scotland 69, 313 Scribner Jr., Charles 144–​145, 295 Scribner’s (publishers) 63–​64, 64n14, 142–​145, 155–​158, 191–​192, 218, 220, 221, 295, 329 Secularism 294–​295 Seldes, Gilbert 288 Self, Donnie J. 262n1, 264–​265n6 Seligman, Herbert 288 Sender, Ramón 296–​297 Seneca 67–​68 (Annaeus Seneca Lucius)  Shadduck, D.C. 268n18, 268–​269n19 Shafto, M. 266–​267n12 Shakespeare, William 77–​78, 85–​86, 146–​147, 175 Sheehan, T. Joseph 264–​265n6 Shelton, G.C. 265–​266n8 Singer, Beth 77–​78 Singer, Irving 76–​77, 295 Singer, Peter 119 Skepticism (Scepticism) 16–​23, 24–​47, 277–​278, 281, 296, 310–​311 Skowroński, Krzysztof Piotr (Chris) 293–​332 Smith, Adam 166 Smith, Joel 169n4, 177–​178n1 Snarey, John R. 264n4

342 index Social Context 149–​162 Society of the Advancement of American Philosophy (saap) 293–​294 Socrates (Socratic) 25–​26, 73–​74, 79–​80, 88, 94, 132 Solipsism (Solipsist) 9, 14, 17–​23, 109, 207, 231, 281, 282 Southern New Jersey Chamber of Commerce 234 Spain ix, 49–​50, 58, 61, 67, 68–​69, 75, 76, 89–​90, 97, 101, 102n12, 104, 139, 145, 177, 201, 203, 204–​205, 211–​212, 213, 214, 221–​222, 295, 296–​297, 307, 308–​309, 312–​313 Spanish-​American War 90, 197–​198, 211–​212, 296–​297, 308–​309, 313 Spanish Civil War 233–​234, 297 Speicher, Betsy 265–​266n8 Spinoza, Baruch 7–​8, 25–​26, 43, 65, 84–​86, 91, 99, 135, 143–​144, 159, 169–​170, 220–​221, 319–​320 Spirit (Spirituality) 5, 6, 7, 12–​13, 38–​39, 48, 51, 52, 55, 83n1, 86n12, 88–​89, 93, 98, 99, 109, 122–​123, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130–​132, 211, 214–​215, 260, 273, 276–​277, 282, 287, 294–​295, 298, 316, 317, 324, 332  see also Spiritual Life Spiritual Life 3n1, 10–​11n6, 13n13, 48, 49, 50, 52, 55, 77–​78, 81, 85–​86, 92–​93, 97, 105, 122, 123, 131–​133, 195, 196n3, 198–​199, 201–​202, 214–​215, 227, 228, 288–​289n11, 296, 304n41, 304–​305, 308, 311–​312n65, 317n86, 324–​325  see also Spirit (Spirituality) Sprigge, Timothy 77–​78, 201 Stalin 113 Stallknecht, Newton Phelps 77–​78 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  293–​294, 298n16, 300n24, 303n33, 303–​304n37, 304–​305n42, 314n74, 316–​317n84 Stanton, Betty 147 Stevens, Sharon 261 Stevens, Wallace 72, 200–​201, 213, 288 Stich, Stephen 277 Stoicism (Stoic) 112–​113, 296n6, 296n7, 304, 307–​308, 317–​318, 323  see also stoic pragmatist

stoic pragmatist 296, 305 Strauss, Richard 163 Strawson, Peter 6–​7, 24–​47, 200–​201, 206, 310–​311 Strong, Charles Augustus 220, 302 Stroud, Barry 25–​26, 27, 277–​278 Sturgis, George 68–​69, 83–​84, 89, 329 (first husband of Santayana’s mother)  Sturgis, George 83–​84 (Santayana’s nephew)  Sturgis, Robert 159–​160n16 (Santayana’s half-​brother)  Sturgis, de Sastre Susan (Susana) 61, 61–​62n8, 89, 90–​91, 104, 145, 214 (Santayana’s half-​sister)  sub specie aeternitatis 44  see also Objectivism Subjectivism (Subjective) 26, 40, 43, 45–​46, 47, 51, 52, 168, 276, 278, 300, 317–​318 Substance 12–​13, 36–​38, 53, 81, 129, 168, 211, 283–​284, 323  see also Matter Switzerland 63–​64, 75, 93, 142–​143, 155–​156 Szmyd, Jan 77–​78 Tanselle, G. Thomas 91, 96, 98, 149n1, 164–​165, 181–​183, 217–​218, 256 Technology (Technological) 163n1, 165, 166–​167, 171, 173–​176, 183n3, 226–​227, 239, 247, 250, 262–​263, 304–​305, 306–​307, 322–​323, 331–​332 Terrorism (Terrorist) 233, 300–​301n26, 307–​308n53, 318–​319 Texas A&M University 76–​77, 87–​88n3, 146, 163n1, 174, 257–​258, 269–​270, 293–​294, 328 Thayer, Scofield 288 Thompson, Richard F. 29 Time magazine 56, 191, 214, 257–​258, 305 To Kill a Mockingbird 116 Tolerance (Toleration) 73–​74, 186, 267, 294–​295 Transcendentalism 103, 310n59 Traveler ix, 48–​55  see also Pilgrim Trotsky, Leon 216 Truth 5, 12–​13, 21, 48, 51, 53, 55, 67–​68, 95–​96, 98, 101, 115, 128, 169, 208, 211, 214, 224–​225, 228, 240–​241, 242, 251, 271, 272,

343

index 274–​275, 277, 282, 286, 289, 300–​301, 310–​311, 312–​313, 318, 323  see alsoRealm of Truth (The) Unamuno, Miguel de 299, 299n21 United Nations 132, 219 United States 57, 58, 69, 73–​74, 90, 92–​93, 100, 101, 102n12, 104–​105, 107–​108, 110, 117, 133, 140–​141, 156, 174, 193–​194, 197–​198n5, 209–​210, 211–​212, 214, 221, 222, 244–​245, 249–​250, 257–​259, 300, 308, 313–​314, 325, 331–​332  see also U.S. (USA), America Universals 25, 30, 31, 33, 41–​42, 119, 207, 210–​211  see also Essence University of California-​Berkeley 60, 103, 142, 295 University of Delaware 144–​145 University of Salamanca 142, 295 University of Tampa 146, 293–​294, 328 University of Texas-​Austin 142, 147, 295, 331 University of Virginia 142, 295 Upanishads 316 U.S. (USA) 57, 64, 134, 139, 140, 141–​143, 158–​159, 199–​200, 203, 219, 308, 325, 326, 327–​328, 329, 330  see also United States, America Utilitarianism 111, 127 Value 4–​5, 43, 52–​55, 56, 65–​66, 67–​68, 76, 80–​81, 83–​84, 88, 106–​108, 111, 112–​113, 114, 116–​117, 119, 120–​122, 123, 124, 125, 153, 154, 160–​161, 162, 167, 168, 182–​183, 189–​190, 203–​204, 206, 214, 217, 219, 237, 254, 259, 263, 264–​265, 269, 274–​275, 286, 296–​297n10, 300–​301n26, 311–​312, 316–​318, 319–​320 Vandeinse, W. 266–​267n12

Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy (The) 271 Vanderbilt University 3, 208–​209, 241–​242n4, 280, 293–​294, 295 Vatican (The) 115, 142–​143 Verdi, Giuseppe 164, 167 Virginia (USA) 69, 313 Vogelweide, Walter von de 109n23 Vonnegut, Kurt 168–​169, 178 Walker, Celeste 261 Wannsee House 291 Ward, Frederick Champion 101 Wenkart, Henny 147 Wheelock, John Hall 64n14, 156–​157, 159n15, 288, 329–​331 Whitehead, Alfred North 150, 181–​182n1 Widaman, Keith F. 267n13 Wild, James R. 262n1 Wilson, Edmund 104 Wilson, Elkin Calhoun 77–​78 Wisdom 52, 53–​54, 79–​80, 81, 91, 97, 98, 99, 102–​103, 132, 205, 211–​212, 310, 316 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 6–​7, 25–​26, 27–​32, 37–​38, 41n71, 42–​43, 44, 183n4, 195–​196, 271–​272, 275, 282 Wokeck, Marianne 146 Wolfson, Austryn 288 Wolinsky, F.D. 267–​268n14, 268–​269n19 Woodward, Anthony 77–​78 wwi (First World War) 75, 211–​212, 297, 308–​309, 311, 325, 330 wwii (Second World War) 75, 142–​143, 203, 204, 295, 297, 308–​309, 329 Yale University 76–​77 Zamir, Shamoon 111