Thus Spake Santayana

Once upon a time I considered in all seriousness doing a dissertation on the work of George Santayana – specifically his epistemology and thoughts on “animal faith”.

In the past Santayana was often included in lists of American pragmatists, but more recently scholars have refined that view to include an appreciation for the uniqueness of his contributions. As a philosopher Santayana's literary elegance masked a rigorous commitment to clear and distinct thought; he was a humble materialist when it was not in fashion and a skeptic at a time when most of his contemporaries clamored to pronounce their claim on Truth. According to Santayana, “scepticism is an exercise, not a life; it is a discipline fit to purify the mind of prejudice and render it all the more apt, when the time comes, to believe and to act wisely” (1923: 69).

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Santayana's anti-foundationalism, non-reductive materialism, and pragmatic naturalism coupled with his emphasis on the spiritual life and his view of philosophy as literature anticipated many developments in philosophy and literary criticism that occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century, and these served as a challenge to the more humanistic naturalisms of John Dewey and other American naturalists.

In a few words: I believe Santayana’s time has not yet come.

“I have a great respect for orthodoxy; not for those orthodoxies which prevail in particular schools or nations, and which vary from age to age, but for a certain shrewd orthodoxy which the sentiment and practice of laymen maintain everywhere. I think that common sense, in a rough dogged way, is technically sounder than the special schools of philosophy, each of which squints and overlooks half the facts and half the difficulties in its eagerness to finding some detail the key to the whole. I am animated by distrust of all high guesses, and by sympathy with the old prejudices and workaday opinions of mankind: they are ill expressed, but they are well grounded. What novelty my version of things may possess is meant simply to obviate occasions for sophistry by giving to everyday beliefs a more accurate and circumspect form. I do not pretend to place myself at the heart of the universe nor at its origin, nor to draw its periphery. I would lay siege to the truth only as animal exploration and fancy may do so, first from one quarter and then from another, expecting the reality to be not simpler than my experience of it, but far more extensive and complex. I stand in philosophy exactly where I stand in daily life…” [Santayana 1923]

It seems to me those who quietly track the triumph of tangible realities over speculative fancy are not only the most practical of humans but also the wisest:

“[M]y 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.” [Santayana 1923]

Learn more about Santayana’s legacy: here, here and here

UPDATE: More Santayana Aphorisms

“A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud.”

“All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.”

“Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.”

“Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.”

“Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.”

“My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.”

“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”

#santayana